We Were Both Disappointed
by Beguile
Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.
1. Smart is Making the Right Decision

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: Originally planned as a single installment for _JIC_ , this quickly turned into a short, multi-chapter fic, one that will likely span about five chapters when all is said and done. I will be returning to Just in Case soon with a one-shot, but I just had to get this started. I found an older prompt from the Daredevil Kink Meme asking for an infected wound, maggots, and some body horror. The fact that Stick and Foggy ended up together was an added bonus.

I make reference here to details from my other fics: the lawsuit Stick mentions is from Best Served Cold, along with all the contacts Foggy has amassed. Also, the animosity between them lingers from an installment of Just in Case ("…Stick Comes Back").

The title and chapters are all lines of dialogue from the episode "Stick".

Readers, I hope you are all doing well and that you enjoy the set-up. I'll be back soon with more!

* * *

We Were Both Disappointed

One: Smart is Making the Right Decision at the Right Time

Foggy decides that the only thing worse than getting a call is not getting a call at all. Worse is staring at an infuriatingly silent phone in his best friend's empty apartment.

There's no need to call the cops. Technically, they're already looking for Matt. They've been combing Hell's Kitchen since early this morning when the devil was linked to a massive fire in a furniture store. There's more to the story, but the details have gone up in smoke, kind of like Matt has.

He's officially missing in action. And a missing person.

His cell phone goes off. Foggy answers too quickly to check who it is. "Matt?"

"Nope," Karen replies. She picks up on the panic in Foggy's voice, "Is he alright?"

"Uh…" don't tell her, don't tell her, don't tell her. Make anything else up. "Yeah, he's fine. Just…not coming into the office today. He's out of town."

It's almost as bad as his 'car accident' lie after Fisk and Nobu. Karen smells the dishonesty from a mile away. "Matt left town? To go where?" she knows as well as Foggy that everyone Matt has in the whole wide world lives within ten blocks of each other in Hell's Kitchen.

"Yeah, he…" Foggy spins through excuses in his head. Can't say "with a girl" lest he hurt Karen's feelings. Can't say "visiting family" because Matt doesn't have any. "…one of his profs at Columbia asked him to come do a guest lecture for his class. On disability law."

Wow, that sounds so plausible Foggy almost believes it. He can hear Karen starting to believe it too, or at least not dismissing it outright like the car accident thing. "Oh, wow, that's fast. Is he just gone for the day?"

"Yeah, far as I know," which conveniently leaves open the possibility of Matt never coming back because, you know, dead. He gets to another topic before he starts spilling his fears through the phone. "But enough about Matt. How are you?"

Karen is suspicious again, "I'm fine. A little worried actually: the streets are crawling with cops this morning. There was a fire last night. The man in the mask is supposed to have been involved."

"Well, you know that man in the mask: he likes to keep people guessing."

"I hope he's okay."

"Yeah, me too," Foggy sweeps another gaze around the apartment. He keeps waiting for the sound of terrified footfalls, for the thud on his best friend's body hitting the floor. For Matt to reveal that he's been in the apartment this whole time. He's crawled back from the brink in pieces and is ready to be put back together.

Nothing happens.

"Look, Karen, don't bother going into the office today. The neighbourhood's a mess with this manhunt."

"O-kay," she is super suspicious now. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, absolutely. I've got some…some family stuff to take care of." His best friend in all the world is close enough to be considered family, and he's currently MIA. "I'll see you later."

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," his voice shatters like glass on the words. Foggy swallows hard. "Minor crisis. Missing cousin. Happens all the time. I'll see you. You have a good day."

"You too," Karen says, audibly making a mental note to poke holes in his stories later. Damn it, he almost had her with the Columbia thing. He's a lawyer. Lying should come naturally to him!

Foggy wallows in the silence that follows the call. The apartment feels larger without Matt, and the soundlessness finds new places to swell until Foggy is dwarfed by his solitude. He is alone. Matt's gone. The cops are looking for him. They're going to peel his molten corpse out from the charred wreckage or fish him out of the river.

Or they might not find him at all. Matt's managed to evade the NYPD thus far, even when his daredevilling has landed him in pretty awful physical shape. Two nights ago he led them on a wild goose chase down three city blocks with a gashed-up hip. He might never be found, not without someone as good as he is looking for him.

Foggy taps his phone with a sweat-slick finger, nearly losing the device in the process. There is literally no better time than the present to call for reinforcements.

He really wishes there was someone else to call though.

* * *

There's a list of numbers he has from his research: most are disconnected, but to the ones that aren't, Foggy leaves a message. He starts with, "Matt's AWOL. Maybe dead. Please help." After a while, though, when there's still no sign of Matt and Foggy's nursing his second beer, he resorts to snark, "Come on, asshole. I'm in Matt's apartment. I'm unarmed and getting drunk. I'll let you take a free swing at me if you get your geriatric ass back to the city."

A woman answers from the other line in Mandarin, and she speaks so lovingly and patiently that Foggy knows he's being patronized. He bids her good day and hangs up.

"Ugh, I have to do something!" he storms a circle around the apartment, antsy and nervous. Matt's dead, Matt's not-dead – regardless, Matt's missing. He's in the city, maybe fine, maybe not, and Foggy has no leads, nowhere to begin, at least nowhere he can begin easily. And the one person who can help him is more MIA than Matt (figures).

He charges up the stairs to the roof. The wind bites at Foggy's cheek. His breath rises in a ghostly cloud into the afternoon sky. Why Matt can't pick the warmer days to go missing is going to be the first topic of discussion when all this is over. If Matt's still alive, that is. Foggy just needs to act. He's been calling and waiting and Matt's dying/dead and he, Foggy, is not alone on the rooftop.

"I really oughtta kill you, you know that, right?"

Foggy is too upset to resort to pearl-clutching no matter the old bastard's attempts at theatricality. He lets the hairs on the back of his neck point the way to where Stick's standing behind him. Fear grips him for a painful second followed by resigned apathy. Whatever: really, if the asshole wanted him dead, Foggy knows would have been dead a long time ago.

"How long have you been out here?" a glance over his shoulder Stick standing behind him. The old man's milky eyes are trained towards the city. The hilt of his katana is visible over one shoulder, the strap of his canvas bag over the other, and his cane is folded in his hand like a weapon. Foggy can't help but gulp. He remembers that cane all the way in his bones.

Stick smirks, obviously picking up on all the signs of fear Foggy is giving off. "Not as long as you've been inside burning up your list of contacts, wallowing uselessly in self-pity and bad beer."

Foggy is about to take offence, but, "You're here, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I'm here," and he isn't happy about it. Stick has better things to be doing, like indoctrinating more blind children into an army of ninjas by terrorizing the hell out of them. "You got some nerve calling me up. Our day in court isn't for another month. Looking to slap me with another lawsuit?"

"Matt's missing."

"Matt doesn't want to be found," Stick corrects Foggy. "I don't know if you noticed while you were crying in there on the couch, but there's an awful lot of cops roaming around."

"He always comes home," Foggy insists, "or he calls or texts or something."

The sound of Stick thinking is a quiet hum of breath, "Maybe he's finally come to his senses. Cut all this out of his life."

"Or maybe he's dead," Foggy snaps.

Stick nods, "That's more likely. The four other guys in that building did, which you would know if you'd actually been to the scene."

"I'm a lawyer. I just don't get to wander onto crime scenes because I feel like it."

"Tell them you're representing the man in the mask: the Daredevil," Stick's guttural voice makes the nickname sound ridiculous, derogatory.

"Because that'll make the NYPD want to cooperate with me! 'Hi, I'm here to represent the suspected terrorist and vigilante who burned down one of the oldest family businesses in Hell's Kitchen and maybe killed four people. The same guy you're currently wasting a bunch of tax dollars trying to find,'" Foggy shakes his head in defeat. "I wouldn't have called you if I had another choice."

"You always have another choice."

Foggy growls, ""If I had another choice that would work. Come on! I go down there, I might end up further from finding Matt than sitting here on the couch. Hell, I could lead them straight to Matt!"

Stick nods thoughtfully, "You are that lucky. And _that_ dumb."

"Thank you!" Foggy is only too proud to admit it where his friend is concerned. "Now, can we please get to finding Matt?"

"We? You called me here to work together? The man you're suing for emotional pain and suffering?"

"You would bring that up at a time like this."

"I can find him faster on my own, provided he's not dead already."

"What if he's injured? Are you up for hauling him across Hell's Kitchen without the cops catching you? Leaping and diving over rooftops with a two tonne vigilante strapped to your back?" if Matt's life weren't at stake, Foggy would pay to see that. Stick is a powerful old bastard, but he doesn't have the kind of stamina needed if Matt's injured.

Stick bristles, knowing he's been beaten and despising the hell out of it. He attacks Foggy right back, "As opposed to what? Catching a cab with the target of a neighbourhood manhunt?"

"I can get a car," Foggy offers defensively.

Stick sniffs and knows. What the hell can he smell to know? Foggy doesn't want to ask. "Your girlfriend's car?"

They are not getting into that. "Does that really matter?" Foggy demands.

It matters enough to delay their departure, apparently. "What are you promising to get that?"

Foggy could lie, but he doesn't want to. Nope: this is Stick, the man who twisted Matt Murdock into some ninja vigilante who may or may not be dying/dead. He deserves an honest answer, "A few things I found online. Now may I text her, or do you want me to draw a diagram?"

Stick laughs lightly, mouth closed, chuckles confined to his throat, "Sure. Text her. I'll meet you at the furniture store."

"I'll meet you-"

But Stick's already gone.

"Asshole," Foggy mutters, heading for the stairs.

* * *

Happy reading!


	2. Ride With Me Tonight

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: I have a feeling it isn't this easy to access the New York City sewer system. I do hope your willful suspensions of disbelief are up to the task of accommodating this fic!

Readers, I am so indebted to you for your patience and your kind support. Infection and grotesqueries await in the next installment, which I'm hoping to get started on this weekend (I have a brief holiday here in Canada). Please enjoy this chapter! Cheers!

* * *

Chapter Two: Ride With Me Tonight

Marci meets Foggy at the Starbucks near Matt's apartment, her intention being to drop off the car, grab an expensive coffee, and whatever. Foggy doesn't ask. He doesn't care where she goes or what she does afterwards. He has a Matt to find.

"Where's your partner in crime-fighting?" she scans Foggy's personal space for a sign of Matt, convinced he's hiding instead of absent. Her eyes hold the spot on Foggy's biceps that Matt usually grabs to be led. When Matt doesn't appear, Marci's posture slumps exhaustedly. "Tell me you two haven't broken up again. The whole Ross-and-Rachel thing was a bad look on you, Foggy Bear."

"He's out of town," though Foggy can't remember the location he gave Karen. Thankfully, he doesn't have to provide Marci with further explanation. She's at the front of the line and is delivering her massive order to the barista. Foggy holds out his hand while she taps her Mastercard to pay. "Now, if you'll just give me the keys-"

"Not so fast," they drift over to a massive congregation of waiting customers stand in limbo for their beverages. Marci plants an arm down on the counter and shifts her weight into the sternest, authoritarian pose she can think of. "I have a few questions: who the hell is this cousin you said ran away?"

Foggy realizes, in that moment, why he is a terrible liar: he spends no time thinking up backstories. "Uh, my cousin?"

"Which cousin?" Marci, unlike Karen, knows the Nelson brood pretty well, having been invited to family events, and while she does the whole shallow-blonde thing like a pro, Foggy knows there's a massive brain hidden under all that platinum hair. "None of your cousins had a problem with running away when I knew them."

He can't remember any of his cousins' names at the moment. There are too many of them. Also, "Look, Marci, fun as playing twenty questions is, I have a game of hide-and-seek to get to. Give me the keys. Please."

She folds her arms across her chest and purses her lips sternly, "What is this really about? You wouldn't promise me those things unless this was a real emergency. I know you don't care about your cousins that much. So which is it: your mom or Matt?"

Foggy almost ganks the keys from her by force. All these people waiting for charred coffee while his friend is out there dying or dead or worse (this is Matt: he's capable of finding worse than death). He draws a shuddering breath and gets himself under control, "It's Matt. He's in some trouble, wouldn't say what, only that I need to come pick him up."

Marci's brow furrows, "Matt Murdock in trouble. I don't buy it, Foggy Bear." She accepts her latte-mocha-low-fat-with-eight-extra-shots from the barista when he calls her name and sets about loading it with as much vanilla topping as she can. "Of course, I wouldn't buy it if you said your mom needed help either."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you, Marci, because Matt is in trouble. And he does need me to come pick him up," and before she can get another word in edgewise, "And I will do everything I promised you – _and more_ – if you give me your car keys."

She finally sees him. Not the outward composure or the thinly controlled anger in his voice. Marci stares in sudden revelation, "You're really worried."

Foggy is too relieved to lie, "Yes. Yes, now, may I please have your keys? Please?"

Marci removes her heavy key ring from her pocket. She hangs onto it even when Foggy tries to grab it from her hand, forcing him to endure what feels like an eternity of _standing there_ when he should be finding Matt. "You explain all of this to me later?"

"Sure, anything," she releases her keys and Foggy tears off. He intends to concoct an excellent lie about all this well before they see each other next.

As if in response, Foggy backtracks. He places a kiss on Marci's cheek, thanks her, and heads out the door.

* * *

The furniture store is a pile of ashes behind a wide perimeter of police tape and police officers. Foggy circles the block, surveying the scene, cursing under his breath about Stick and his stupid you-should-have-gone-to-the-crime-scene B.S. The only officer Foggy has any kind of sway with is nowhere to be seen. These are all grizzled old-timers working their third shift, the leftovers from Fisk's arrest who weren't important enough to fire. He's not getting past the tape, let alone close enough to wherever Matt's managed to escape to.

Still, this is where Stick said they'd meet. Where the hell is the old bastard?

Foggy parks as soon as he's able and takes a walk, hoping for a clue. There's still a crowd watching the clean-up, muttering to themselves about the devil and fire, making the obvious – and too-soon – jokes about hell. He can't see a damn thing except for uniforms and ashes. If Matt did escape, and he did because Foggy isn't willing to entertain the alternative, he did so in a way that's not apparent from this distance. He must have climbed to the roof, but then why didn't he come home?

He goes back to the car and drops inside. Waste of fucking-

"Notice anything?"

Foggy sets the car alarm off when he jumps. He drops the keys, fights with the floor to get them back. The car finally stops screaming once it's restarted. He turns on the epic asshole in the passenger seat. "I am cutting you off, Stick! No more sneaking up on me!"

"Sneaking up?" Stick scoffs almost inaudibly: a little puff of breath to remind Foggy who he's dealing with. "You call an old man sitting in the passenger seat of your unlocked car sneaking up? Your eyes must work worse than mine."

"Forgive me for having more important things on my mind than checking to see if ancient douchebags haven't snuck inside my car. Or if the car is locked," Foggy kicks himself mentally for that one. Then again, Stick can probably pick locks with the power of his mind or some other ninja-nonsense.

"See anything interesting out there?" Stick asks about the scene.

"Lots of cops."

"That's not interesting: that's expected. Local vigilante torches an old family business and the whole precinct loses their minds. All of a sudden it's time for a manhunt."

Foggy scrolls through his memory of the scene for an image that would constitute interesting, but everything today seems expected. The cops would be out in full force after a fire like this. They would be scouring the streets for a vigilante.

But Stick's getting at something, Foggy can feel it, and hell if he's going to let the old bastard maintain a low opinion of his intelligence. If the cops and their actions aren't interesting, what is? "This is an awful lot of activity for a furniture store, even if the Daredevil helped burn it down?"

"Bingo," Stick's mouth cocks into a sideways grin. "Any guesses as to why?"

Foggy is not good at this. His brain muddles through the next couple of thoughts before forming coherent sentences, "…they were already investigating this place?" Obviously, if Matt's involved, there are criminals, and the cops these days are better at knowing where criminals are than doing things about them.

Stick is genuinely impressed, "Not bad."

"Doesn't help me find Matt," Foggy laments. He would trade all of Stick's pride to know where his friend is.

"You're not going to start crying, are you?"

"Depends – do you know anything that'll help us find Matt?"

"Fire's a bitch for the senses. Too much ash, smoke, and interference to get a good read."

"Aren't you supposed to be ninja master? Don't you have like eighteen other senses, some of which you invented for yourself?"

Stick sighs. He twists his hands threateningly around his folded cane, silently begging whatever Gods he might have pissed off to stop testing him with this lawyer's bullshit. "I'm going to give you the same advice I gave Matty when I started training him."

"Oh, yeah?" Foggy can't wait to hear this.

"Yeah," Stick turns slightly towards him, "Shut up. You got a question, shut up. You got a smartass remark, you shut up. You have what passes for you as a helpful contribution to this situation, you shut up. Got it?"

"No, I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? I don't think I totally understand your policy of – what did you call it? Shut up?"

More cane twisting. Foggy takes his petty victory and verbally retreats before Stick can starts beating him, "Yeah, I get it. I'll shut up."

"That doesn't sound like shutting up to me," Stick growls.

Foggy snaps his mouth closed and purses his lips. He's rewarded with another sideways smirk and the slow turn of Stick's head back towards the front window. "Good. There's an access to the sewer hidden under the rubble. You want to ask me how I know that?" It's a test, one Foggy passes because no, he doesn't want to ask. The answer has to do with air speed velocity and the stench of sewer gases and ninja-wizardry. He knows he passes when Stick continues speaking, "My guess is Matt headed below ground."

"If he went to the roofs, he would have gone home," Foggy finally ventures speaking again.

"You might not be as dumb as I think you are," Stick replies.

Foggy knows exactly how to respond, "Shut up."

* * *

It's dark, and they're driving. Foggy doesn't know where. He's looking for another access point to the sewers, and being that he knows nothing about city planning or civil engineering, he's doing a terrible job.

Stick, to his credit, is keeping his mouth shut and his window open, drinking the city in silence. Smells, sounds, tastes, and temperature, all the things Foggy takes for granted with sight, give him a stronger sense of direction than his driver. "Pull over," he says suddenly, but gives no indication if it's because he's found Matt or he wants out of the vehicle.

"Is it Matt?" Foggy asks, forgetting the cardinal rule.

"It's something," Stick replies, having forgotten too.

The parking spot can't come fast enough. Stick leaps out of the passenger seat and takes off at a good clip down the sidewalk. He doesn't bother to open his cane on his way. Pretense be damned. Stick has Matt's priorities, or Matt has Stick's priorities. They're both content to abide by their blindness until a life is on the line. Then it's screw the cane: I've got supernaturally heightened senses.

Foggy can't keep up, and he's driven by a more powerful force than super-senses. Fear is the best motivator. Fear has him leave Marci's car – locking it this time, feed the meter, and tear off after Stick before he can disappear down an alley.

Like master, like apprentice. About the only thing Stick does do is toss his cane in the dumpster. Otherwise his posture is almost identical to Matt's. Beyond the light of the streetlamps, Foggy can almost confuse the two, with Stick being a horrifying vision of Matt's future should the vigilante lifestyle become his sole calling.

"Creepy," Foggy comments.

"Gets creepier," Stick reminds him, stooping low. Metal grinds against pavement. Christ, he's strong. Like Matt, he keeps all his power hidden in a wiry frame. Stick opens up the manhole without much difficulty, and he starts to climb down.

For a brief moment, Foggy is struck by the thought, "This is how I die." Crawling into the New York City sewer system at night with a crazy, murdering bastard who has tried to kill him in the past and Foggy beat the ever-living shit out of just a few short months ago. Yes, this is the end of Foggy Nelson's short life. He hopes Matt will vouch for him at the pearly gates when it's all over.

"You coming or not?" Stick demands from underground.

"I'm coming," Foggy puts the idea of his own death out of his mind. He rips his cell phone out of his pocket and turns on the flashlight, advancing on the manhole with a renewed sense of purpose. This isn't about him. This is about Matt, who has to be in serious trouble to not return home after a bad night of Daredeviling. Foggy clings to that thought as he descends into the inky blackness of the sewer.

The smell is indescribably wretched. He caught a whiff of it above ground, but here, in the muggy, swampy darkness, it's worse in ways that Foggy can't find words for. All the awful odours the city has to offer have teamed up to form a Megazord of Stench. Rotting food and excrement and vomit: oh, no, wait, the vomit is splashing in the back of Foggy's throat.

"Matt can't be down here," he forces his stomach contents back where they belong. The last thing they need is more bad smell.

"I told you fire was hell on the senses. He probably didn't have much of a sense of smell to speak of when he crawled down here."  
"So he is down here?"

Stick doesn't answer. He moves almost silently through the dark, following his senses wherever they might lead. Foggy trails after him.

The light from his torch extends only a couple feet before shattering into blackness. It's horrifying, the endlessness of it all, the solidity, not just of the dark but of the smell. This is not an atmosphere people were meant to be in. And Foggy's senses are normal. He's missing the subtle nuances of echoes and stench. How the hell is Stick managing this? Better question, how the hell is Matt?

Death makes a lot of things easier, Foggy supposes, and his heart tries to take a nose dive out of his mouth. "There's no way Matt could survive down here," he notes, tracking the mucky ground with his flashlight. "You…you warn me if he's…if he's…"

He almost pukes, and not just from the thought of Matt being dead.

"There's something alive down here," Stick lets him know. "Doesn't smell it…"

The flashlight beam cuts across a lump just ahead of them. Foggy can't make out the shape clearly. Some kind of animal? Looks like a dog. A dead dog. A hairless dead dog. Wearing body armour.

Stick sounds almost happy about it, "There he is."

Foggy's heart sinks deep into his gut and stays there, shivering, "MATT!"

* * *

…happy reading?


	3. You Got a Warped Perspective

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: I was in a really, really productive mood this weekend. Between fanfic and fic-fic, I got tens of thousands of words into print. Most of it's crap, but it's crap that's on the page instead of cluttering up my brain.

I really wanted to get this done though. I had an infection-fic started with nary a sign of infection. I hope this whets your palates, Readers. You're lovely, and I hope you're all doing well. Please, enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 3: You Got a Warped Perspective on the Whole Good/Bad Thing

There are rats crawling over his friend's face. Actual rats. Foggy rushes over and swipes them away, ignoring their hissing as they scamper out of his flashlight beam. Matt's exposed jaw is dotted with bite marks. His skin is a mess of bloody constellations against a soot-black sky. Foggy holds the back of his hand over Matt's open mouth, relishing the shallow breath of air he feels uncoiling across his skin.

"He's breathing," Foggy sighs, relieved of one worry.

"You call that breathing?" Stick chides him.

Foggy can't deal with that thought. He shoves his phone at Stick, "Hold this for me." The old man, for once, doesn't rebuke him. He wordlessly takes the phone and lets Foggy adjust his grip so the flashlight beam shines down on Matt's prone body. Then Foggy pushes Matt prostrate, turns away in disgust, and outright refuses to vomit. He takes a few deep breaths of sewage-air before looking back, because the taste of excrement is better than the sight of Matt's injuries.

There's two long gashes criss-crossing the red fabric along his upper chest, two more running over his previously injured hip, and none of the wounds underneath look like wounds ought to. Pink, red, rust, black: those are the colours that lacerations ought to be when they're healing well. Foggy knows, perhaps better than most doctors, because he has seen way too many of Matt's wounds. Colours wounds should not be: yellow-green or bright purple or sour milk, like Matt's wounds _currently fucking are_.

Foggy pries the mask off of Matt's face, revealing more unsettling colours. The skin that's not covered in soot is graying and clammy. Foggy's hand comes away hot and sweat-soaked. "Oh, no: no, no, no," Foggy presses his palm against Matt's forehead, hoping he's wrong and this is all just a trick of the light. It's not. High fever, puss-bloated wounds, and a smell that puts the sewer to shame can only mean one dangerous thing. He starts tapping Matt's cheeks frantically, "Wake up, Matt! Come on! Wake up!"

"He's not going to wake up," Stick notes.

"The hell he isn't!" Foggy grabs his friend by the shoulders and heaves him up against the wall into a sitting position. It's a bold move given how limp Matt is. His head falls one way, his body falls the other, and Foggy has to use most of his upper body to support Matt's flopping parts before he can resume tapping Matt's face. "Wake up, Matt! You have to wake up!"

Stick interjects, "You smell that?"

"I smell a lot of things!" Foggy snaps.

"I mean from him. Can you smell him? That's not sewer: that's sepsis. He's got blood poisoning. So none of your shaking and shouting is going to wake him up."

Foggy loosens his grip on Matt's shoulders and nearly causes his friend to pitch back into the floor. "We have to get him to a hospital," he takes one of Matt's arms over his shoulder and struggles to stand. Matt is dead weight, a two-tonne wet noodle. He dangles from Foggy's shoulder like an anchor and lands them both back on the floor. "Damn it..."

The light goes out. Foggy groans under the weight. Matt coupled with the darkness equals one hell of a burden. "Uh, Stick? Some of us need that to see." He tries to find the dim light from the manhole they climbed down and fails miserably. The dark is all-encompassing, not so much an absence of light but a presence of black.

Matt shifts next to him; Foggy's heart starts doing backflips. "Matt?" he jostles his shoulder to coax Matt out of unconsciousness. Matt moans and starts to rise, so Foggy follows. "Matt! Matt, you're awake! Thank God!"

"Not quite," Stick replies. Foggy feels his wiry arm stretch across Matt's back from the other shoulder. Almost immediately the weight shifts from his shoulders to the old man, then disappears completely. Foggy is alone in the dark listening to Stick grunting, struggling, and Matt is no longer between them. He's making pathetic moaning sounds, tinny cries that sound less aware than his silence does.

Foggy reaches out but can't find him in the dark. His phone re-emerges though, and the beam from the flashlight reveals Stick with Matt in a fireman's lift.

Matt's eyelids flutter madly and then close. The noises stop.

Foggy wipes at his eyes, tearing up from the burst of light. Yeah, that's what it is: the light. "You got him?"

"Yeah, I got him," Stick snarls as if there was no alternative. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"I'll call an ambulance."

"You can't call an ambulance."

"You have a problem with me saving my best friend's life?"

"I'm curious as to what you're going to tell the paramedics about how your best friend-" he says it like it's a curse word: _best friend_ , "-who's completely blind, by the way, ended up septic in the sewer. Better yet, how he ended up naked and septic in the sewer, because unless you've got a change of clothes for him, he doesn't have anything un-incriminating to wear but his birthday suit."

"I'll think of something."

"Better think of something for how you found him while you're at it."

"I'll think of something!" He can totally lie to paramedics. For Matt's life, he'd lie to anyone. He won't do it well, but… "He is going to die if we don't take him to the hospital."

"What are they going to do in a hospital? They're going to put him on saline and antibiotics, drain his wounds, debride them, give him pain meds, and, oh, yeah," Stick takes a moment to stop and readjust Matt on his shoulder. He turns so that Foggy can see his face in the light. "Put him under arrest for terrorism and vigilantism. You ready to defend your best friend in a court of law? To defend yourself when you're charged as an accomplice?"

Foggy keeps trying to think of an explanation. He can't help but groan loudly, "I'll think of something!" He has to think of something. This is Matt, and he's dying, and he needs help.

Stick turns away from him and keeps walking. Matt flops against his back, arms dangling lifelessly. Foggy bottoms out. His insides go crashing down onto the muck-covered ground. He charges after Stick, "What the hell is your idea? We take him home and do all that stuff ourselves? Draining and debriding and antibiotic-ing?" They're still walking, and Stick still hasn't said anything. Foggy continues, "Two of those involve surgery. I am not a surgeon! I am barely a lawyer lately! Are you a surgeon, Stick? Did they cover surgery in ninja academy?"

He gets Stick to stop and turn. Irritation runs deep in all of the old man's features, so much so that Foggy thinks he might get punched. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Stick uses his words instead of his fists. He spells it out like he's talking to an idiot, "You take him to the hospital, he ends up in prison – and that's if he makes it. You could be his cell mate, and if that happens, you're definitely gonna be somebody's bitch. Take him home, yeah, he could die. Or he could pull through this a free man."

Foggy wants to be able to deny any of that – especially the comment about him being a prison bitch – but damn it all to hell and back, Stick is right. Foggy can't lie to Karen over the phone: Karen, who trusts him completely. He doesn't have a hope in hell of lying to paramedics, nurses, doctors, and inevitably the officers who investigate how an idealistic young lawyer ended up septic and slashed underground.

To say nothing of him being a bitch in prison. "I kicked your ass once, I will do it again."

Stick simplifies the terms of their predicament again. "He's dying and you're driving. Make up your damn mind, would yah? Kid's heavy as shit."

Foggy has to insist, "I won't let him die."

"Dually noted."

They start moving again. The ladder materializes dreamily out of the darkness. Stick stops at the base and makes room for Foggy to climb up.

Foggy shuts off his flashlight, pockets his phone, and starts up. "We're going to need supplies…" he begins to compose a text to Claire in his head with everything they'll need, as well as a casual inquiry about whether she knows how to debride infected tissue or not.

Stick interrupts his train of thought, "I'll take care of it."

"Maybe you didn't hear me before," Foggy drinks in the sweet, sweet smell of the city as his head bursts out of the pavement. "Debriding involves surgery, and surgery requires skill. Also, and I mean this in the best possible way," he sits down on the edge of the manhole opening and reaches into the dark, "eyesight helps."

Stick rolls Matt up and off his shoulder until the lad is propped up against the rungs of the ladder. He lands with a dull thud and sways unsteadily, this way and that, in fevered unconsciousness. Stick manoeuvers him up into Foggy's waiting hands. Between the two of them – Foggy pulling, Stick pushing – they get Matt up and onto the pavement.

The cool breeze hits Matt with what looks like tidal force. His shoulders curl up from the chill, and his silence gives way to delirious moans and chattering teeth. Foggy lays him down on the pavement, allowing the cold to tighten its grip on him, but it also lets Foggy to rip off his jacket and lay it over his friend.

"Would you let me the hell up?" Stick grumbles from the underground.

"Sorry," Foggy moves. He tugs Matt into a sitting position, catching him when he falls forward, and gets the coat onto his arms. Once buttoned, the wool jacket conceals the body armour from view. Matt looks ridiculous – and dying, Foggy can't forget that – but at least no one can see him dressed as a notorious vigilante.

He could be sleeping if not for the circumstances. And the gray, clamminess of his face. And the dying. Foggy pats Matt on the shoulder, "It's going to be okay." He doesn't know who he's trying to convince.

Stick catches Matt's head with his chest as it falls back. He hugs Matt around the chest and pulls him up. Then he slings one of Matt's arms over his shoulder. "Anyone looks, anyone asks, he had too much to drink."

Foggy nods dumbly. Too much to drink. He can handle a lie like that.

He grabs Matt's other arm and lifts. Matt drags on the ground between them.

Nobody asks. Most barely look. And Foggy would know: his heart is racing a mile a minute. They're exposed. The jig is up. A cruiser is going to pull down the block in a second and catch them red-handed. Stick's going to bolt. Matt's going to die. Foggy's going to prison.

Except none of that happens. They make it to the car, load Matt into the back seat, and peel out of the parking space with time still left on the meter.

"There: hard part's over," Stick says. He sounds almost cheery.

Foggy is going to skin the old man when this is all over. He will. Regardless of whether Matt pulls through. "You're right! Matt's not going to die! I mean, yeah, sure, he's non-responsive and necrotic. He's got a fever of a million degrees. We don't have antibiotics or a sterile environment. The cops are looking for him. We can't go to a hospital. Neither of us are at all qualified as medical professionals-"

"I gave you one job," Stick laments. "Matt was a kid and understood what 'shut up' meant."

"Yeah, he understands 'shut up' real well," Foggy chides. The silence from the backseat is infuriating and heartbreaking in the same instant.

The old man doesn't have a comeback for that, because there isn't one.

* * *

Parking is shit at Matt's apartment, so Foggy stops at the side door. He helps Stick unload Matt from the backseat. Easier said than done, since Matt's gotten limper during the drive. He slops against Stick's shoulder, and no two parts of his body work in tandem. Everything's disjointed and loose, swinging, swaying, and drooping. The fever's melted him into a gray, person-shaped soup.

Stick does a better job with Matt than Foggy, but then again he has ninja-reflexes. Also, ne'er as Foggy can tell, the asshole is dead inside. He isn't bothered by things like Matt being near death. He isn't thinking about what to tell the cops if Matt dies so that the lad can have a Catholic funeral. Nope, Stick is completing the mission. He carries Matt Murdock with the grit and determination of a well-trained soldier.

Foggy watches them go, Matt's perspiration still slick on his hands. God, those wounds smell bad. When they're inside the building, he drives around the block and finds the closest spot to park. He hoofs if back to the building.

The lights are still off in the apartment, but Foggy can hear scuffling in the bathroom. He locks the door behind him, kicks off his shoes, and rushes onward. Stick has Matt lying out on the floor. Foggy flicks on the light to reveal the open slashes in the body armour. They frame the soured, puffy monstrosities growing out of Matt's skin.

"I'm calling…" Foggy's brain is short-circuiting in disgust and horror. Human bodies aren't supposed to look like that. "He has a nurse-friend. I'm calling her."

"Don't bother," Stick insists. He moves around Foggy and leaves the bathroom. "Focus on getting him cleaned up. I'll be back."

Foggy has his phone in his hand, "Okay, news flash: I'm incapable, and while you are a scary-talented psycho-killer, we are the least qualified people on the planet to be cutting away at a person's flesh." He realizes his error and amends his statement with, "to save their life. The least capable to cut away at a person to save their life."

Stick groans in that way he does, the almost-too-quiet-to-hear way that resonates with Foggy on a near unconscious level, "You done?"

"How are you not getting this? We need help! You wa-ay more than me, but help! We need it!"

"And I'll get some," Stick tosses his head in Matt's direction. "Get him cleaned up. Call your nurse-friend if it makes you feel better, but get him cleaned up for when I get back."

"Fine," Foggy storms into the bathroom, "but if you come back with a scalpel, I am shoving it up your-"

The loft door slams shut on an empty apartment.

Foggy looks down at Matt as he dials Claire's number, "I'm going to kill him. You hear that, buddy?" Her voicemail picks up. Foggy almost throws the phone down in rage. He forms a halfway coherent message and then disconnects.

They're alone in this, the three of them.

Very well: "I'll kill him _after_ ," Foggy promises.

* * *

Happy reading!


	4. Maybe There's Hope For You Yet

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: I am in no way advocating for showering a person whose wounds are infected. Foggy isn't either, but he doesn't have a lot of options. Please forgive the potentially unsanitary conditions presented by this chapter. Also, it gets a little cuddlier than previous h/c fic that I've written, which I've been told not to apologize for so I won't.

Readers, I hope all is well with you. Thanks very much for reading this story! I hope you enjoy this installment. Thanks to it, the story will be at least one chapter longer. At least. Maybe more. Oh, I'm terrible at this plotting thing…

Anyways, thank you. Thank you much! Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Four: Maybe There's Hope For You Yet

Foggy finds conflicting reports online: wash wounds only with saline, wash wounds only with warm water, wash wounds only with the assistance of healthcare professionals; drain wounds only with a sterile scalpel, drain wounds only with a syringe, drain wounds only with the assistance of healthcare professionals.

"Screw you, Internet," he drops his phone onto the bathroom counter and rips off his coat. Rolls up his sleeves. Rips his hands through a pair and a half of neoprene gloves before getting them on. Regardless of what the internet has to say, Matt has to get out of the sewer-y body armour and have his temperature brought down. Also, and this thought ribs Foggy all the way through the process of dismantling the devil's body armour, it's not as if Matt's condition can get much worse. All he seems capable of at the moment is dying faster.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Foggy says despite how stupid it sounds, because he is nervous. No, he's more than nervous, more than panicked. This is bad. Looks bad, smells bad, feels bad, sounds bad, so it must be bad. He has to give himself another train of thought besides Matt dying on the bathroom floor. "After this, we get together for movies, board games, and bar hopping like regular people. No more crawling into the seedy underbelly of Hell's Kitchen – literally! – to save you from intense peril."

The suit peels away from Matt's skin like it's stuck with adhesive. That sweat has been drying for a while. Foggy makes a new face. He is going to have a pantheon of disgusted expressions by the end of the night. "Don't get me wrong: I'm not opposed to saving your ass, but damn it, Matt, this is ridiculous. Scratch that: this is so many miles past ridiculous we may never find our way back to normal again. Not that you know much about normal, because BUDDY."

Foggy almost drops him. Almost. Matt's back is a cartographer's nightmare, a continental map of bruises and scars all overlapping in clusters, the topography of which is determined by what hurt more to attain. One row in particular stands out. It's board-shaped, left by something heavy, and Foggy would think about it further but he's able to identify the source of Matt's injuries. He has seen so many bruises that he can deduce what caused them.

Beam. Big wooden beam. Big wooden beam on fire. Foggy hates his brain and wishes it would rot out of his skull. He eases Matt onto the floor in the hopes that the cool tile will help.

Then he sees the front and no longer feels so repulsed by the back. On the contrary, Foggy wishes he could go back to apprising bruises. "It looks like the Joker is trying to crawl out of your hip face-first," he mutters sadly, one-sided banter no longer a distraction. He scrubs a hand over his face as if his reality were an etch-a-sketch. The harder he shakes it, the faster the image disappears.

Reality abides by the rules most infuriating to him though, so Foggy reopens his eyes and sees the sickly explosion under Matt's skin. He stands up and paces, turns around and, yep, Matt's hip still looks like Satan's finger-painting. Two half-healed lacerations from two nights ago that are necrotized into black-purple stripes. A newer gash that makes a crooked smile with pustules for teeth. The wounds crossing Matt's upper chest are marginally better-looking: Joker-lite. Diet Joker. Joker that hasn't fermented long enough. There aren't giant pockets of puss waiting to drain underneath them like Matt's hip. Foggy tries to consider that a small victory, but Matt hasn't moved a muscle. He hasn't made a sound. He's gotten grayer and more feverish.

"Human beings aren't supposed to look like that!" he slumps back down, goes to work on Matt's pants. They're adhered with sweat and blood. "This is giving me flashbacks of working in my uncle's butcher shop skinning dead animals. Dead animals, Matt!" Foggy throws the suit overhead the second it comes off. He misjudges the weight; the suit runs down his back onto the floor. "Rotting, dead animals!"

Foggy grabs a wash cloth and dampens it. Very quickly, it's apparent that he's not washing; he's just moving soot around on Matt's chin, potentially letting it seep into his infected slash wounds on his upper chest. "Forget this," he turns on the shower and runs the water lukewarm. Cool enough to bring down Matt's temperature; warm enough to not send him into shock. Then Foggy lugs his friend under the spray, soaking them both in the process.

Matt makes a sound that's a cross between a gasp, moan, cry, and choking. "Whoa, easy, easy, I've got this. Hold your horses, Matt. I got this," Foggy struggles to keep a grip on him. They're both slick from the water, and Matt's motions are erratic. He clearly wants to struggle, puts forth a good effort too for a dying guy, but in the end, Foggy gets him sitting upright into the corner of the shower. The shower water mostly ends up on Matt's shivering legs until Foggy redirects the spray to hit the wall above Matt's head.

That's when the rest of Matt starts shivering, and the panicked, rolling-moan continues full force. The gray drains out of his face, shoulders, and chest, leaving a ghostly white pallor. "Okay, okay, I hear yah, buddy. I hear yah," Foggy adjusts the temperature until it's a little warmer. The shivering and moaning persists. Of course it does: water's dribbling all over Matt's infected wounds.

"I know, I know, it hurts, right? Is that what you're trying to say? That it hurts?" Matt's sound-making gets more frantic. He shifts in the spot, not strong enough to move. Foggy sluices water over his sweat-stale hair and neck. "Hey, it's okay. I know it hurts. You really did a number on yourself this time, Murdock."

Matt's eyes flicker open beneath the rivulets of water running over his face. He drops his head back limply, the first step back into unconsciousness, Foggy thinks, until Matt starts opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

"Thirsty!" Foggy snaps his fingers in victory and almost lets Matt fall onto the tile. "Crap," he pushes Matt more firmly into the wall. "Stay. Stay! Oh, for the love of…you can't hear me."

Matt drops his head forward suddenly, gasping, "I can…I can…yeah…"

At least, Foggy thinks he's talking. Fear is doing funny things to his brain. "You with me?" he gives Matt a shake. Matt does his best impression of a bobble head. He could be nodding, and he could be unconscious again. "Matt?"

"Here. Here, Foggy…I'm here," Matt's head rocks back into the corner and stays there. His eyelids struggle to keep his eyes from rolling back to their whites. "Where's here?"

"You're home, Matt. We brought you home."

"We?"

"Stick and I."

Matt shuffles weakly, eyes shutting. His mouth keeps falling open when he tries to speak, muffling the words, but Foggy's pretty sure he's asking where the old bastard is so that he can kill him. "Don't worry about him. You've got a massive infection."

"My hip…" Matt drags his leaden hand towards it and almost makes himself pass out again from the effort.

Foggy stops him, "Yeah."

"I ran…ran out of antibiotics…"

"And got it slashed open again!"

Matt moans, "Volume, Foggy."

"Sorry. It's just," he hesitates. To tell or not tell? That is the question. Foggy opts for the truth, "This is bad, Matt. Really bad. And we can't take you to the hospital, I can't reach Claire. We're going to have to drain these and debride them here, at your apartment, with whatever equipment Stick brings back."

He wonders if Matt can hear the gravity of the situation in his voice. The lad's sinking from the waist up, the energy draining out of him along with…oh, God, Foggy can't. He can't even. He jumps up from the shower and makes a beeline for the toilet, reaching it the second he starts the puke.

Matt whimpers, "Agh…what…what is that?"

Foggy retches, "That's you. That's you, Matt! Your wound just opened up!" he flushes the toilet and plants a hand firmly over his mouth to keep from puking again. He looks back at Matt in the shower, water rushing over him, carrying the gooey puss out of his hip. "It looks like the Joker vomiting sour milk from your hip!"

"Smells like it too," Matt agrees. He is crumbling before Foggy's eyes: lips quivering, eyes circling, body slackening. "I guess this means you don't have to drain it anymore…"

"That's not funny."

"…is a little funny."

Foggy mentally reminds himself that his best friend is dying to keep from throwing something. The sight of more puss globbing out of Matt's hip helps. He comes over and helps it along, scooping it aside with a cupped hand. His face enters an uncomfortable twist. Wrong, sick and wrong. There are blackened areas and necrotic flesh that, when waterlogged, just look more blackened and more necrotic.

Matt chugs several mouthfuls of air, the makings of a scream just audible in his throat, "…is gonna be okay, Foggy. It's…it's gonna be okay."

"But it might not be," he tosses a good tablespoon of puss onto the drain and watches it melt away. The room feels cold all of a sudden, and he's shaking. How is he shaking if Matt's shivers have subsided? "You could die, Matt!"

"I'm not going to die," Matt clamps his jaw shut to prove how serious he is, but his mouth falls open a second later. His head bounces forward on his neck too.

Foggy can't help but sound stern, "That's not something you get to decide."

"I know you, Foggy. I trust you. I trust…I trust you…"

And he's gone, drained out, head hovering over his chest. Foggy props it back up into the corner of the shower. Matt's still breathing; his eyes are moving. He's back to boneless, cheek resting heavily against Foggy's palm. His head weighs a tonne, like the rest of him, and Foggy feels it all in his heart. God, he hates this. He hates this so much. He hates seeing Matt passed out and cleaning puss out of wounds and hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

They can't keep doing this. Statistically speaking, one of these times, Matt isn't going to make it. Statistically speaking, it's probably this time.

Foggy can't think about that. The fact that Matt trusts him when he barely trusts himself brings less comfort than focusing on the basics. Matt's still alive. Stick's coming back. Foggy has one job, and he can do it. Hopefully without tipping the already shoddy odds Matt has against him.

The water runs down the drain clouded by soot, blood, and mucous of every unhealthy shade. Foggy is careful not to cross contaminate. He keeps circling the wash cloth over the parts of Matt's skin that aren't horribly infected: face, chin, shoulders, arms, legs. He changes his gloves when he dares to touch the open wounds. When he runs out of gloves, and he inevitably does, Foggy sits, soaking, and concedes, "It's not like it's getting any cleaner." He focuses instead on the parts of Matt's body that aren't currently medical marvels. He goes for the soap, grabs shampoo by accident, decides what the hell, and pats a handful onto Matt's head.

Matt startles dopily. Instead of waking up all at once, his body prioritizes. Fingers twitch, arms flop, head rolls forward, and the words come and go on ragged tides. Crap – heightened senses. Ten fingers jabbed suddenly against his scalp probably feel like a bunch of javelins.

Foggy softens his movements, "Sorry. Never done this to another person before."

"Serves me right…hiring cheap help…" Matt ends his sentence with a gross, wet sound. He topples back, and Foggy has to catch him before he gives himself a concussion against the bathroom wall. That's when Foggy notices the drool. Matt's drooling and not noticing and it's like Bad Sign #50 they should be in a hospital.

"Uh, Matt?" but Matt is rolling his eyes to the back of his head as his open mouth widens. Foggy shakes his head between his soapy hands, "Matt?"

Nope. Out. Foggy tilts Matt's head until it lands into his palm and stays there. He brushes a soaked sleeve across his best friend's mouth, wincing. "I got'cha. I got it. You can't hear me…"

"Can," Matt groans. "Can, Foggy. I can."

"You're drooling everywhere," Foggy tells him. He can see a comeback forming in Matt's gaping mouth, behind the drool, but he doesn't hear it. Whatever Matt wants to say is swallowed up by a moan. Not pained this time: relieved. Foggy's found the back of his neck and it's the only spot Matt wants physical contact for the rest of his life.

Foggy is not going to think about how long that is. He tilts Matt's head back and streams the water from the wall over his scalp. The suds overtake all the other crap circling the drain and stay there by Matt's knee.

The sewer smell wafts over from the body armour, but Matt's no longer reeking of human filth, a fact he seems to appreciate along with the contact. Foggy's heart crumples into a ball and pelts itself against his sternum. "You're hanging in there," he can't figure out if it's a statement or a question.

Matt mumbles something wholly unrelated to the subject of hanging in there, which proves nothing. Mumbling fits a rather limited definition of hanging in there. Foggy figures he better get more information, "Wanna try that again?"

"Smells better in here," Matt says breathlessly.

"Feel any better?"

"Cooler. Chest still hurts. Hip…" he sniffs. Makes a face. Drops his head. Gags. "Let's…don' talk about my hip."

"I don't want to," the damn thing look like a laughing, rotting mouth that they're going to amputate later. Foggy shuts off the shower. Matt immediately resumes shivering anew. Even after Foggy wraps him up in all the towels, the shivering continues.

Foggy shivers too. The water wasn't that warm, but it was warmer than the air in the bathroom. "Come here," he drags Matt against his chest and hugs him, finding a safe spot to put his arms that isn't one of the sub-dermal Joker faces. "I got you. I got you, pal."

"…'m here, Foggy…I'm here…" Matt reassures him. "So is Stick…"

The loft door opens. Stick thunders down the stairs towards the bathroom. Foggy sighs, shakes Matt, "You're hanging in there?"

Matt doesn't answer. He's out again.

Stick turns the corner into the doorway. The old man faces the mirror, but Foggy's spider sense is tingling that he's being watched. "Aw, well, ain't this sweet," Stick chides.

Foggy gives him the finger. He hangs onto Matt the whole time.

* * *

Happy reading!


	5. Big World

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: So much of the treatment provided in this chapter is super illegal, super dangerous, and potentially very deadly. I am in no way advocating for it and included many of the details for storytelling purposes only. Apologies to the medical professionals out there who are deeply offended and to the readers whose willful suspensions of disbelief just snapped in protest.

Speaking of readers, thank you again for your kind support and attention. Hope all is well where you are!

* * *

Chapter Five: Big World, Not All of It Flowers and Sunshine

Foggy has just extricated himself out from under Matt when Stick hands him a small packet. "Pour that in a mug of boiling water and bring it back here," is all he says.

"What is it?" Foggy asks, unable to identify the contents. Dry herbs crack under his probing fingertips, but the label is written in sweeping characters that give him little clue as to what's inside. He sniffs at it and gets a better idea of what Stick's satchel smells like, no hints about what he's about to brew. "I thought you said you were going for medical supplies?"

"Unbunch your panties: I got 'em," Stick toes his satchel, causing a number of things to rattle inside. Foggy can hear glass and plastic. He's a little unnerved the tell-tale rattle of pills don't join in. He'll spam Claire's phone with texts later, see if she can bring what they're missing. "Get on that, will you?"

"Tell me what it is," Foggy demands. It's an uncreative response, admittedly, but he's at a bit of a sarcasm deficit from their ongoing repartee, not to mention Matt's health (or lack thereof).

Stick doesn't give anything away, "Why? You worried I'm going to poison him?"

"I'm worried that I sent you out on a supply run and the best you brought back was an unidentifiable substance-"

"Ah, hell," Stick grumbles.

Foggy continues, "-to probably force-feed my best friend-"

"Would you fucking go and-"

"-a guy you have maimed on more than one occasion-"

"You think this is poison? That's what you think?"

"I don't know what to think! And don't say that I'm dumber than I look," Stick mutters something about not having to, and Foggy chucks the packet into his smug face. Stick catches it and tosses it back, getting Foggy square on the nose before he can catch it again. He waves it up to Stick's face, "You said you were going for medical supplies!"

"And I told you I got 'em. That's part of it. Now would you go and boil some fucking water, pour that in, and bring it back here before your best friend-" again with that derisive tone, "-burns to death from the inside?"

Foggy purses his lips into a fine line, "You brought a scalpel, didn't you?"

Stick doesn't say a damn thing, because it's too late for Foggy to do anything if he did. "Don't touch him till I get back," he snaps, but there's not a lot Foggy can do about that either.

The kettle takes for-freaking-ever. Foggy changes into a dry shirt from his duffel and then smells the contents of the package while he's waiting: grassy, a little musty, nothing dangerous, but what the hell does he know? He can't understand the label. The best he can figure is that it's not poison, though his mind is filtering through dangerous possibilities that Stick could make Matt a lot worse before he gets better. Stick is that twisted. He is more than that twisted, in fact.

He brews it in hot water, not boiling, and the concoction smells more like farm than anything else, the sweet, starchy smell of wheat and lemon and…Foggy runs out of adjectives. He brings it back to the bathroom as quickly as he can without spilling.

Foggy's stopped at the door though, caught by the bizarro scene of Stick kneeling in front of Matt, doing his strong, silent routine of watching without seeing a damn thing. Not that he'll be asked, but Foggy can't think of how he knows that Stick's focused on Matt. He could be listening to a robbery in the back alley or babies crying half-a-city away, but no, no, Foggy knows that Stick's hyper-focused on Matt. The old bastard has all his many scary-acute senses on Matt, so much so that Foggy expects him to have a hand on his former protégé. Stick's hands are at his sides, but he's got one hell of a grip on Matt with every other fibre of his being.

Foggy gets the distinct impression he's alone in the room until Stick's head turns ever-so-slightly towards him. He coughs, feigning nonchalance, "This stuff smells."  
"Tastes worse," Stick says, not helping, as he takes the cup.

"What is it? Some kind of ancient, herbal infection remedy used by ninjas for thousands of years?"

"You been watching too many comic book movies," Stick produces another packet from his left hand, a tiny bag of tiny tablets, one of which he drops into the tea. It vanishes into the pale green soup that Foggy mixed up. "This is going to help the antibiotics go down."

He follows the packet with his eyes as it disappears into a pocket on Stick's cargo pants. Stick then swirls the cup a few times with a ridiculous level of acuity. He pulls a pill bottle from his pocket, one filled with tablets that Foggy actually recognizes: antibiotics. Steam rises in coils of dried grass and cracked wheat.

Impossibly, Foggy receives his answer in the silence. If Stick says what he spiked the drink with out loud, Matt'll hear, and he won't drink.

"Wow…"

"What?"

"That shutting up thing. It actually worked."

"Usually does," Stick blows on the surface of the tea, sniffs it, and then brings it closer to Matt's face. The smell and heat make Matt recoil. Stick catches him by the back of the neck and tips the mug up to his lips. "Small sips, Matty. There we go."

He chokes down what can't be more than a thimbleful. Stick gives him a short break before pouring some more into his mouth. Matt's ready for it this time and decidedly more awake even if his eyes are still closed. He tucks his face towards the wall. "Old Stick, old tricks."

"Nice of you to join us," Stick grabs him by the chin and twists his face back. He pulls a tablet of antibiotics from the bottle, a horse pill, and pushes it onto Matt's tongue before flooding the lad's mouth with more tea. "Drink up."

Matt swallows cleanly this time, and he's rewarded with a short reprieve, "This tastes like shit."

"Keep drinking; it gets worse," Stick chides, giving him another mouthful.

Apparently, it's too much. Matt sputters anew and growls, "What's in this?"

Stick doesn't miss a beat, "You know the rules, Matty: you gotta taste to guess it. Get it right, you win. Get it wrong, you keep guessing."

"This is twisted. You're twisted," Foggy is having visions of little, cherub-faced Matt being force-fed herbal soups laced with whatever pills, potions, and powders Stick thinks a warrior should defend against. A sick and twisted game thought up by a sick and twisted old man. He moves to intercede. Stick elbows him aside and tilts the mug towards Matt's lips.

There's still some tea in Matt's mouth when he tries to speak again, "Narcotic."

"Too general," Stick forces another sip into his mouth by digging his fingers into Matt's cheeks. "Try again."

Matt makes a face and holds it. He scrapes his tongue against his teeth to get rid of the taste or clarify it. "Stop playing games," he gripes. His eyelids twitch from the effort to open them, but evidently the white powder is starting to take effect. "You put something…what is it…"

"Trust me when I say it's for your own good," they can't glare at each other, but Foggy feels their senses taking aim at each other. His guts tying themselves in knots. Childhood games where Smirk slipped Matt drugs is apparently a mere drop in a cruel and nasty ocean for these two. But there's also a weird vein of mutual respect and understanding, enough that Stick assures Matt, "You aren't going to want to be awake for this." And instead of using a chokehold or a needle, Stick gently serves Matt a masked sedative.

One that kicks in like whoa. Matt's jaw unhinges, and his weight comes to rest on Stick's open palm so much so that he can't fight the last mouthful of tea poured into him. Matt swallows before slipping out of consciousness. "That's it, Matty. There's a good kid," Stick isn't being sarcatistic either. He is genuinely praising Matt for succumbing. He even wipes away at Matt's mouth when it's over with a gentleness unbecoming of his murderous hand. Then he leans Matt back into the corner of the shower,

Foggy is simultaneously warmed and nauseated, "What did you give him?"

"Oxycodone," Stick dumps the dregs of the tea down the drain.

"You stole Oxycodone from the hospital," Foggy sighs, never getting used to how freaking capable Stick and Matt are without four of their five senses.

"Actually, the dealer stole it. I confiscated it."

Every organ is Foggy's chest does a backflip in unison, "You got this stuff on the street!?"

"Would you calm down?" Stick groans.

Headlines race through his head, so many headlines, "This stuff kills people!"

"It's pure, prescription grade."

"That's worse! You didn't…" Foggy stands up and paces in a circle. He charges back towards the shower, reaching for Matt. "He's throwing that crap up. Get the hell away from him. Get the hell out of his apartment!"

"You really think I would give him an overdose of a badly cut opiate?" Stick demands. "I gave him just enough that he can sleep instead of feeling his wounds being debrided."

"Yeah, which is great until he stops breathing!" Foggy holds a hand in front of Matt's mouth as if he's about to be proven correctly. When he isn't, when Matt's breath hits his open palm, Foggy retracts his hand and gives a surly growl, "which could be any time now."

"Then we'd better get started," Stick untucks Matt's arms from the blanket and takes one over his shoulders. He lifts Matt all the way up, grunting, and stalks slowly out of the shower. Matt's feet drag along the floor behind him as they go. His shoulder is going to hurt like hell when this is over.

Foggy grabs Matt's other arm. Together, he and Stick get the lad – stark naked, still gray, passed so completely out cold – to his bed. They tear down the blankets, unroll some towels, and get Matt's head resting on a pillow. Foggy rushes over to the closet for an article of clothing that can give Matt a little dignity. Maybe a little warmth while they're at it.

Matt is still breathing when he gets back to the bed. He looks…not comfortable. Comfort requires awareness. He looks empty. A hollow, Matt-shaped shell with nothing inside but soupy, sinewy meat. Foggy gets him into boxers and sweats by shaking his limbs till they fall where he needs them, unable to look at Matt's face while he does it. The vacancy runs deeper than the bones. Matt has sunk so far inside himself, Foggy isn't sure how he's supposed to find his way back.

"I'll try Claire again," he runs back to the bathroom to get his phone. His hands are shaking. They shake so badly that he almost kills his phone in the process. "Not now…" he mutters to himself, because he needs his hands. He's the one who's going to have to go in there and cut away at Matt's rotting skin until it can heal properly or Matt dies one of those two things and only those twothingsaregoingtohappen.

"Not necessary," Stick interrupts his near panic attack as Claire's voice mail picks up. Foggy disconnects. "Bring my bag, will yah? We're going to need it."  
He does what the old man says, marching back into the bedroom with a chip the size of Texas on his shoulder. Foggy's all ready to give Stick a piece of his mind as he shoves the bag towards him, "There had better not be a scalpel in there."

" _I_ wouldn't touch him with a scalpel," Stick starts pulling items out of his bag, laying them in a row by Matt's feet on the bed, "and I trust me with a knife a helluva lot more than I trust you."

Case in point: Stick wasn't kidding about medical supplies. He's got dressings galore, adhesive, gloves, cotton balls, saline, other packages Foggy can't recognize. He's happy he has his phone with him. He has no idea what the hell half this stuff does or how it's going to help clear infected tissues. Also, "You stole a Mercy General-worth of supplies, but you went to a drug dealer for Oxys?"

"How well do you know Matt?" Stick asks.

For the first time ever, their pissing contest has an explicitly stated goal, one that Foggy is about to blow to kingdom come. "Better than you."

"So you know how guilty he's going to feel when he wakes up and finds out I robbed a free clinic to patch him up? That in order for him to live, a patient or several might have had to die because their doctor now has a concussion from the guy who just knocked over their dispensary?"

Foggy feels punched in the gut by the all the good intentions wrapped up in murder-fists. Stick talks about Matt's guilt and morality, his humanity, with such disdain, but hell if he isn't abiding by them in his own amoral way. "Yeah, I know," Foggy agrees, "but you don't strike me as the type to give a tiny rat's ass about how he feels." He might as well have spit in Stick's face, the way the old man flinches at the word 'feels'. Feelings don't exist for him. They cloud an otherwise simple equation of me vs. world. "You got the Oxy from a drug dealer because it was easy, not because it would make Matt feel better."

There's enough of a silence that Foggy is second-guessing himself, though Stick makes no effort to disagree. "He is going to kick my ass for dosing him," he nods slightly to Matt's very unconscious body, "not to mention how we're going to clean up those wounds of his."

Foggy refuses to think about how that is going to happen, "Knowing there's one less dealer on the street is a good peace offering. Unless you killed him. You didn't…? No, actually, don't answer that. I don't need you to answer that."

"I killed him."

"Because of course you did!" not like Foggy couldn't figure that one out. There's a reason he didn't need an answer from Stick.

"You would have rather I left him alive? You, a lawyer, think a drug dealer deserves to live?"

"I think we have better things to do than have a moral debate. But yes, for future reference, I do."

Stick huffs, digging his hand into his satchel again, "I don't know who's worse: him or you."

"Neither: it's you. It's definitely you, Stick."

"Can't argue with that."

He pulls another item from inside his satchel, a plastic canister that hides neatly inside his fist, and tosses his bag to the floor. Foggy waits for the clatter of metal, the reveal of something worse than a scalpel, but there's nothing. The canister is the last of Stick's supplies.

"What's that?" Foggy asks.

"This is how we're going to debride his wounds," Stick says. He holds the canister out to Foggy, who can't see anything in the dark. Instead, Foggy takes the container and heads for the bedroom light switch.

"If this is some kind of corrosive chemical-"

"This is so easy, a dumbass and a blind man can do it. All you have to do is apply the dressings."

Foggy hesitates before flipping the light switch. "Is this an ancient ninja trick?"

"Nope, this is modern medicine at its finest."

"It had better be."

The lights temporarily blind Foggy as they burst to life. He blinks through the white spots on his eyes, squinting his eyes at the canister in his hands. The contents move in a small, mushy, puss-coloured cloud.

And they don't stop moving, not even when Foggy's eyes adjust to the light.

He draws the canister closer to his face and a tidal wave of horror crashes over him. Foggy looks to Matt and his disgusting hip, to Stick and his impassive stance, to the canister and its horrifying contents. "No," he says. "Hell no. Absolutely the hell no."

"You told me not to bring back a scalpel."

"I should not have to say not to bring back…these!" Foggy grabs his phone out of his pocket, and he puts the canister – "Ugh, why am I still holding this?" - on the night stand.

"Who are you going to call?" Stick asks exhaustedly.

"I don't even know!" he punches in 9-1-1 and then keeps pressing buttons: Claire's number, Karen's, his mom's, the Chinese restaurant that knows the firm's order by heart, _everyone_. He slams the phone down on the night stand next to the creepy-crawly canister that's supposed to save Matt's life. "There has to be a better way. There has to be someone we can call."

Stick always sounds authoritative, but now, his voice quiets and he sounds downright Godlike, "There is no one else to call. It's you and me and him against all the crap in his body, and if that doesn't kill him, the fool's hope in hell that someone more qualified or capable comes along will. You got a choice here, Foggy: you either help me help him, or you take that worthless hope of yours and get the hell out of this apartment. Because I'm not going to watch you hand him over to the police out of cowardice."

"This has nothing to do with cowardice! This has to do with getting my best friend killed!" Foggy is not going to cry in front of Stick, damn it. He is not. He is already. Fuck. Foggy changes the subject, "You can't do this alone."

For once, Stick doesn't disagree, "I may as well be with you throwing a tantrum every five fucking seconds."

How many times do they have to go through this? "This is my best friend you're talking about! Are you sure this'll work?"

"Surer about this than I am about you hacking away at infected wounds."

Foggy huffs, "That is the exact opposite of helpful." He picks up his phone again and voice-commands it to run a quick Google search. The results are promising, but they too come with the strict disclaimer that none of this should be done without the supervision of a medical professional. He shuts down the device and picks up the canister, reading through the label carefully. Medical grade, sterilized, and prescribed to a patient who will have to wait for a fresh delivery thanks to Stick's sticky fingers.

"Fine," he says at long last. "Fine, let's do this. Let's let maggots eat away at my best friend's necrotic flesh."

Stick almost smirks, "What are friends for?"

Foggy almost throws the maggots at him, "Not that!"

* * *

Happy reading!


	6. Nobody Feels Sorry For You

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: MAGGOTS! THEY'RE HERE!

Finally.

Thank you, Readers, for bearing with me. I'm hopefully concluding this fic with another two installments. Until then, please have yourselves a wonderful week! Enjoy this, the next chapter!

* * *

Chapter Six: Nobody Feels Sorry for You and Nobody Ever Will

Foggy searches 'maggot therapy how to' online, and the results are disgusting. A whole row of nauseating Google images appears at the top of his screen, followed by cheery sales pitches from the main supplier of sterile maggots and a step-by-step guide. He glares at the academic journals: "Maggots Clean Wounds Faster Than Surgeons" causes his mood to marginally improve. It's not saying much, but the thought is more satisfying than the warning that maggots can burrow into the skin if they're left on for too long.

Instead of asking how long is too long for insect larva to be feeding on his friend's necrotic flesh (because weird. So much weird), Foggy arranges the supplies in order from first step to last. Rearranges because he gets them wrong. Shit, they need a diagram. And a medical degree. And while they're wishing for things they don't have, Foggy would love if Matt wasn't septic and didn't have to be eaten by baby insects.

Stick has taken the liberty of propping Matt on an angle using pillows, fully exposing the distended, water-logged wound that Foggy has no desire to look at. Let alone touch. He opens up an alcohol swab and scrubs at the area around the infection.

Puss bubbles at the lip of the wound. More puss. A never-ending supply of dead white blood cells - why does he know this information? He is a lawyer. He does not need to know what puss is made out of; he needs to know how to file a suit in the state of New York and tell Karen where to steal more K-Cups when they run out at the office. Foggy grabs some gauze and pats at the yellowy, curdled gunk that Matt's body doesn't normally produce. Then he goes back to cleaning the area where the adhesive pad needs to go so the baby bugs don't leave Matt's gross-looking thigh.

So many things wrong with that sentence: _so many things_.

"How bad is this going to hurt?" Foggy regrets asking the question as soon as it's asked. He gets to trade the thought of maggots feasting on Matt for Matt being in pain. Well played there, Nelson. Well played.

Stick gives a slight nod, "More than a tickle." And then, as if that doesn't hit Foggy hard enough, "He can take it. Hardest part'll be keeping him still, especially once he stops taking pain meds."

"Yeah, you can schedule that in sometime around when these ones wear off. Thanks, by the way."

"Thanks for what?"

"Developing his aversion to painkillers. Great call, that. The Catholic guilt and self-flagellation weren't nearly enough punishment."

"I taught him how to use pain."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah: made him into a warrior. I get it," Foggy unwraps the adhesive padding more forcefully than intended, sending the sheets of it scattering across the bed. He feels Stick's unspoken chastisement like a staff across his shoulder blades. "But pain isn't going to help him out of this one."

Stick stands impassive, unmoved, the severity in his features augmented under Matt's rarely used bedroom light. "We'll see," is all the old man can say.

Foggy lets him have the last word. He has bigger fish to fry, like how the hell does this padding work as a barrier? He can't stick it over the wound. According to the internet, the maggots need to breathe and the necrotic tissue has to seep out. So he has to cut it? Into strips? That he lays in a circle? He checks the internet again and watches a video of a foot being unwrapped. Yes, kind-of strips surrounding a teeming mess of pudgy maggots squirming over a glossy, soupy opening into a human foot. When this is all over, he is vomiting for three days straight and it won't be enough.

He cuts the pads into three strips lengthwise, and then makes a series of cuts along one side so each bend into a circular shape. With the adhesive Stick brought, he lays them in a perimeter around the stinking, rotting wound. The one that is still leaking puss onto the pillowcases, that is still black and purple and mushy like strips of briny tofu. And Foggy is never eating tofu ever again. Ever.

Perimeter laid and bile forcefully swallowed back into his stomach, Foggy returns to his phone. "It's time," he says with a sigh, dropping his device back onto the bed. He exchanges it for the jar of medical-grade maggots he's been trying not to think about. "Apparently, we put them on, cover them with cotton, and then cover that with some dressings, and then we leave them to…eat."

"Easier than a scalpel."

"Slower than a scalpel," Foggy arranges the cotton balls, dressings, and tape so that he can get at them easily. Once the maggots are on, he wants them covered up as quickly as possible. For Matt's benefit as much as his own. The lad isn't going to take kindly to being eaten.

"Safer than a scalpel," Stick counters, winning the argument.

Foggy doesn't want to give him the pleasure of an easy victory, "If I do this right."

Stick wants just that and gets it, "So do it right."

He leaves the bedroom before Foggy can say another word.

Just as well. Foggy checks his phone, checks the wound, checks his phone. "Please, please let me be doing this right," he opens up the maggot jar and – one more check, maggots twirling at his fingertips – dumps the contents of the jar onto Matt's leg. The maggots, the gauze, the whatever-else-if-anything-was-in-there. He quickly makes a neat layer of cotton balls over the creepy-crawly tendrils untangling over Matt's skin. Twisting into the pockets of his wounds, under the blackened edges and the purpling gashes. They're in heaven, Foggy's in hell, and Matt's mercifully unconscious for all of this.

The dressings are a pain in the ass to attach. A bundle of maggots fall off the wound onto the pillow, and Foggy seriously debates whether he has to pick them up or if he can pretend he never saw them. He's about to reach for them when Stick's old hand asserts itself. He scoops up the hungry vermin, thrusts them back into their cotton cocoon, and makes his way to Matt's head. He's got a bowl of water in his hand, a damp rag hanging over the side. He wrings the rag out and deposits it onto Matt's forehead.

Matt stirs. No, scratch that: Matt moves and makes a sound, but neither are indicative of consciousness. They're instinctual, reactive; the parts of Matt Murdock that can't be drugged out of existence for very long. Parts that Stick strung so tightly it's not a matter of if they'll snap but when.

Stick, to his credit, actually does a half-assed job of settling Matt down when his moving and moaning pick up. "Calm down, kid," he commands, and Matt, like a good little soldier, follows orders by quieting. His twitching continues, but it's dulled, mute, confined mostly to the face and neck. If the maggots have started eating - and how could they not with the rotting schmorgesborg Foggy's just bound them to? – Matt hasn't noticed. Yet. Only the cold registers.

"What do we do now?" Foggy asks as he tidies up the bed. He tugs the blankets over Matt's legs, leaving the bundle of dressings on his hip exposed. Much as he doesn't want to see them, he needs to know if the maggot burst out from eating so much delicious, putrid Matt-flesh.

Stick's voice cuts through the nausea that accompanies the thought, "We wait."

He removes his hand from Matt's shoulder. Odd, Foggy didn't realize he laid it there in the first place.

* * *

Foggy's cell phone vibrates from somewhere under the covers. "Don't hang up, don't hang up, don't hang up…" it might be Claire. Please be Claire. They're in the middle of dressing the chest wound and a second opinion would be glorious. The antibiotic ointment may not be enough to quell the red wine stain flushing deep in Matt's skin.

Foggy leaves Stick to finish with the bandages while he digs. He answers the phone after what might be the last ring.

Claire sounds out of breath, "How is he?"

Foggy departs for the living room. "You could be on the first floor and I could hear you," Stick chides; Foggy ignores him, focuses entirely on how awesome it is to be speaking to Claire, "You remember that night he got beaten half-to-death? It's like that, but worse, and with maggots."

He should have picked a better lead-in. Claire is very, very worried, "There are maggots in his wounds?"

"Yeah, but I put them there. Medical-grade," Foggy ruffles a hand through his hair. He turns around and looks at Matt. The grayish undertones in his skin go green every time the muscles in his neck and shoulders flex, which is happening more frequently. The oxys are starting to wear off. "His temperature is still up, but we've got him on antibiotics…"

"We?"

"Matt's...old…ninja…master…trainer…he's here? It's a…story. I don't know the seven-eighths of it. He did a supply run a little while ago, but there's one working set of eyes in this apartment, and they're not attached to a person who can start an IV," he can hear her footsteps echoing through the phone line as she paces. When she says nothing, Foggy assumes that saline is gettable. He decides to push his luck, "Also, we spiked some tea for Matt earlier, but neither of us think that's a permanent solution. So…"

Claire fills in the rest, "…so you were hoping I could steal some intravenous narcotics while I'm scamming on the hospital's supply of saline?"

Foggy sighs, "I don't want to ask."

"Then don't."

"-but he has maggots in his thigh, Claire. And he's delirious. When he wakes up," because Matt is going to wake up. He's already got a case of the twitches, "I really don't want to have to go nine rounds with a very sick, very out-of-it Daredevil."

"What about his old ninja-master-trainer?"

Foggy lowers his voice to a whisper, "I don't want him doing nine rounds with Matt either. He has killed people _tonight_."

"Matt killed people?!"

"No, his mentor did."

"I killed one, dumbass," Stick bellows from the bedroom, "and he was a drug dealer, and thanks to him, your best friend is sleeping while maggots chew at his leg. You want to get on with your conversation?"

Foggy does, "Please, Claire."

She continues pacing with greater intensity. Her breathing deepens. "I'll try," she is not looking forward to the attempt either, "but I won't be able to get to you until the end of my shift."

"Thank you," he basks in the relief. Not too long, not too much, but he needs a break from all the worrying. Besides, if Claire's on board, nothing can possibly go wrong, "Thank you a thousand times, Claire."

Claire is the exact opposite of relieved. She's only half-joking when she says, "You'll comp my legal fees if I get caught."

"We'll even throw in a jailbreak if you get convicted."

The only way she could be less amused is if she was being arrested at that moment. Foggy apologizes, "If you can't-"

He's cut short by the sound of a struggle coming from the bedroom: man vs. man vs. bedding. "Claire, I gotta go. I'll see you in a bit." Hard to know who hangs up first since Foggy is in such a rush. He makes it at either the end of the fight or the intermission, more than likely the latter given the combatants. Matt and Stick's arms are in a tangle against their chests, while Matt's legs shift drowsily over the sheets. His eyes are shut up tight, and his breath is coming in short gasps through gritted teeth.

Stick shoves Matt back against the pillows before pressing a hand into the lad's sternum. "Easy, Matty. Easy…" Matt's hands flop uselessly against the pillows, searching, for what Matt might not even know.

Foggy is about to guess when a more pressing matter becomes apparent to him, "He can't breathe."

"Sure he can," and to prove it, Stick applies a little more force to Matt's already spastic chest.

"Get your hand off of him!" Foggy pushes him.

The old man holds his ground. Hell, he goes so far as to push Foggy back, giving him some space. "Matt," he orders, garnering a response at long last. It's not a promising one: now Matt's head is tossing, somehow more lost than his hands or his feet. His hip is thankfully immobilized thanks to the pillows around his waist and torso, but they won't hold the more he keeps squirming.

Foggy waits for Stick to lose his patience. Waits for him to reach the inevitable breaking point when his impassive mindfulness sharpens into a razor's edge and starts slashing. The moment never arrives. Stick isn't exasperated; he's calm, absolutely calm, as Matt continues to fit and fuss between the old man's hand and the bed.

"Matty?" there's not an ounce of condescension or derision in the way Stick says the name for once. He continues in his steady, stable tone, "I need you to find your breath, Matty. Come on: like I taught you. Find your breath."

Matt finds a lot of things in rapid succession. He taps Foggy's arm, grabs Stick's wrist, kicks off the blankets, dislodges a few of the pillows. Words return to him though his tongue can't quite navigate their pronunciation. He jumbles consonants and vowel sounds into unintelligible nonsense. Foggy cups a hand along his scalding head, "Easy, Matt. Easy. You're okay."

The lad bucks away from the touch, but he doesn't get far. He doesn't want to. The way his brow furrows, the way his hands and feet settle, all of it screams familiarity. He sniffs and huffs, moaning in frustration this time as opposed to disorientation. Fever must be playing with his senses in a big way, or maybe it's the brood of insects chomping away at his leg. Whatever the reason, Matt never comes round. He goes back to his weak struggling, his druggy swipes and moans.

Stick's hand stays on his chest, even after Foggy withdraws. He presses hard into his fingers, "You feel that, Matty? Feel it? I need you to follow it. Forget about whatever you think you're doing and focus on this. Focus on the pressure. Gonna take a deep breath to relieve it, Matt."

Fear crosses Matt's already tortured face. He lashes out as best he can, which is to say he drags his arms across his torso and taps them against Stick's arm. "Way to go! That worked so poorly!" Foggy grabs Stick by the wrist and drives his hand out of the way. He thinks he's making progress until Stick peels his fingers off with ease.

"This is no time for one of your classic homicidal training sessions!"

"It wouldn't be homicidal if you stopped babying him. What? You want to hold his hand? Cradle his head? Sing him a lullaby? Be my guest. We'll see how well you do when his strength starts coming back and those maggots really start pissing him off, when he doesn't know you from the guy who took a slash at him."

Foggy fumes, "Okay! Fine! By all means, show me how crushing his chest, behaving like an asshole, and wrestling him is going to calm him down!" He sits at the edge of the bed, a pissed-off student, waiting to be shown up.

Stick is only too happy to oblige. He taps his palm on Matt's perspiring chest, loosening the pressure a little. "But how will he ever learn without the threat of his impending demise?" Foggy demands. He's acknowledged by a slight curl of Stick's lip, and it's a tiny, necessary victory with Matt's persistent struggle for awareness. He isn't any closer to finding his breath than he was a second ago when Foggy was quote-unquote "babying" him.

The room falls quiet. One by one, the sounds disappear, until Matt's failed attempts at speaking are the only ones that remain. He writhes under Stick, strength riding in and out of him like a tide, and it's when he's lapsed into a limp heap on the bed that Stick tries speaking again, "Come on, Matty. Your breath's right here, remember? Right where you left it. Count it in for me. One…"

Matt gets to three before he gets lost again. Stick stays with him. "Try it again," he urges with a patience Foggy can't believe he possesses. "One…two…"

Miraculously, Matt inhales again, and he makes it all the way to five before releasing. He hyperventilates a few times afterwards, unable to catch his breath. Stick's hand stays on his chest, getting heavier and heavier with every low, steady, "That's it. Get in control here, Matty. Count it out," until Matt's breathing enters a rhythm. In for five, out for five, exactly the same as the old man's.

Foggy tries not to let his relief show. God, it does feel good to see Matt settling in. He's still moaning, still fidgeting, but the fear is receding. He can sleep for a little while longer before the meds really wear off. Now, Foggy can focus too: on sticking it to the old fucker for being a massive toolbox. "I'm waiting," he taps a finger on his knee for emphasis.

Stick's patience snaps like a twig, "Waiting for what?"

"For all that chest-crushing, asshole-ing, and wrestling. You know, the not-babying stuff you promised to show me."

Stick rolls his eyes. The old, blind ninja-master actually rolls his eyes. For real. "Dumbass…"

But he doesn't deny it for a second.

* * *

Happy reading!


	7. Spend Your Life Crying

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: This has been a weird fic to write, since the plot consists of a singular device that basically chews slowly away at the storytelling (pun intended). Also, Stick, while a fun character to include, exists as a mystery, and I've been working really hard to keep him that way. I hope the fic manages to capture even a little bit of his contrariness as a character (which I may have imagined, to be fair).

Readers, this fic is starting to wind down. I'm seeing one, maybe two chapters left, and I can't thank you all enough for having embarked on this disgusting journey with me. I hope you have enjoyed the fic.

* * *

Chapter Seven: Spend Your Life Crying and Rocking Yourself

Despite his best efforts and having better things to do, not to mention Matt settling mercifully back into sleep, Foggy takes it personally. Hard not to when your friendship is trumped by a lying, murderous, abusive bastard. He hazards a glance at the puffy maggot sack as he thinks, because obviously he needs to feel disgusted as well as self-loathing. The layer of dressing and cotton is still, which seems odd to Foggy. Shouldn't they be swelling up with juicy man-flesh? Shouldn't the dressings be writhing around bloated white bellies?

Not that he's disappointed when they aren't, but it would be nice to know how normal this reaction is given how abnormal their situation is.

He stumbles over to the couch, exhaustion trumping his self-pity. Let Stick handle Matt, he figures. They can run away together and live in the mountains with a collection of blind orphans abused into being warriors. One big, deranged, angsty, assassin family. Finding their breath and killing people together.

The thought isn't playing fair and Foggy knows it, distantly, in the same way that he is happy that Stick is there for Matt's sake. He is loath to admit that the hand-on-Matt's-chest and firmly delivered orders has brought them – and, more importantly, Matt – peace. Hell if Foggy can figure out what's comforting about one righteous asshole reinforcing another guy's macho constitution, but damn, it explains a lot about Matt. Why he rejects help. Why he retreats. Why he gets so tetchy when comfort, kindness, and basic human decency are directed his way.

It feels like no time has passed when the meditative calm gets interrupted by (who else?) Stick. Stupid Stick who gets up off the end of the bed, announcing, "He's waking up." He wanders off to the kitchen, leaving a very sedate-looking Matt and an even more confused-looking Foggy.

Foggy takes the old man's place on the bed next to Matt. The bedroom remains absolutely silent, punctuated only by the sounds of Stick in the kitchen getting water. "He's passed out," Foggy notes, just in time for Matt's moaning to restart and gather in volume. "Nevermind…"

Matt bends his wounded leg at the knee, nudging Foggy in the hip before recoiling. He keeps doing that: reach out, back off. Be touched, jump back. Cautious and skittish like an abused puppy or, right, a 'warrior'.

"Seriously?" Foggy whispers. "I'm not the one who's going to hurt you, Matt."

"He's playing the odds," Stick offers by way of explanation. "Better to bite the hand that feeds before you find out it's trying to break your neck."

Foggy is about to ask the old man what his damage is, but truthfully, he doesn't want to know. None of this mask-and-katana bullshit is going to help Matt, who is starting up with a new round of moaning, flinching, and twitching. Foggy shushes him, first without touching, and when that doesn't work, by holding his hand. "Matt? Matt, you with me? Talk to me."

The lad doesn't respond, but he does start making a real go at consciousness. His other hand drifts in a lazy arc from his back to his front to his back again before landing, limp, on the bed. Grousing discontent with his failure semi-verbally, Matt tries to pull himself upright to survey the situation. He fails at that too, less noticeably this time. His abdominals tighten, his eyelids twitch and creep open, but he stays sandwiched between the pillows, wrapped up in his blanket and sheets, lost and confused and barely aware of why.

"Bizarro Matt…" Foggy comments, who keeps thinking, with every new injury, he has seen Matt are his most un-Mattest, his most dis-Mattled. Apparently, that's a well that keeps getting deeper. Foggy removes the now-lukewarm rag from his friend's forehead before Matt can thrash it off.

Stick returns, glass of water in hand. "Lift him up," he orders.

Foggy crawls across the bed to where Matt's head is tossing. He lifts Matt by the shoulders and slips between his friend's too-hot back and too-cool headboard. The contrast is stifling. Foggy can feel the perspiration soaking through to his chest, carrying with it an inhuman level of heat. He catches Matt's head on his shoulder; it's like being clubbed with a hot stone.

The motion earns a few more moans from Matt, but he seems incapable of more. Whatever momentum he was gaining on his return to consciousness seems to have fizzled. He hangs off of Foggy like a lumpy lead blanket. He flinches a little when Stick drops onto the bed, but he goes limp again almost immediately.

"How much longer till your nurse friend shows up?" Stick asks.

Foggy can't see the clock from where he's pinned, so he checks the windows. Darkness has lifted by degrees between the buildings, no longer an oppressive blackness but a murky indigo. Must be close to five am. Claire's still at least two hours out, even if her shift ends at six. "Too long, probably," and Foggy winces as he admits it. He knows what's coming, what has to come, if the maggots are going to stay in place.

If _Matt_ is going to stay in place. He's shifting again, unnerved by the added heat provided by Foggy's chest against his spine.

Stick grabs Matt rather gruffly by the chin and holds his head up. Finally, the lad's roused. He lays an arm over Stick's and pulls, a weak attempt to free himself from the grasp, one Stick ignores. "No," Matt tells him feebly. "No…"

Foggy backs him up. He presses a thumb down hard on Stick's wrist and manages to free Matt. His only thanks is a shudder and puff as Matt melts back into him. Stick's face is pure murder. Foggy holds out a warning hand of his own and half-expects to get it ripped off. "I get that your default mode is Massive Asshole, and I get that he responds to it because Stockholm Syndrome, but if you want my help in –" he doesn't say it. No need to rattle an already addled Matt. "- _you know_ , you'll pretend to be an actual human being while you're doing it."

He waits for the comeback that never comes. Stick sits at-the-ready, hand balanced on Matt's knee, an impossible expression on his face. Stern and exhausted but…acquiescent? When he reaches for Matt, he doesn't nab or crush this time around. Hell, he cups a hand under Matt's neck and lifts the lad's head up gently.

Matt opens his eyes when the water comes, though he's not really there. He's too calm to be there, too drained. He swallows his water blankly. Stick retracts the glass and gives him a minute to regain control of his tongue.

"Unh…" he drops a hand over his hip, eyes drifting shut. "…unhing…suthing…something…"

"Did you slip him it again?" Foggy asks.

"No," Stick replies, mildly irritated by Matt's obstinacy. He yanks the pills out of his pocket and readies one for Matt's mouth.

He never gets the chance. There's a tussle as Foggy pulls Matt's hand away from the maggot sack. The lad responds by jerking into what must register to his drugged mind as a fighting stance. To Foggy and Stick though, Matt looks like he's trying to punch himself in the jaw. "No more," Matt declares sloppily, his jaw flopping. "No…"

"Okay, no more. Shhh…" Foggy hushes him, knocking Matt's hands out of the way. He brushes a hand over Matt's head over and over, because he has never had to comfort his friend from this angle before and petting Matt is the first thing he thinks to do. Silly as it seems, the stroking words. Matt calms. Stick gives him another sip of water, the pills still in hand. Foggy swats at him, hissing unintelligibly, until the pills end up on the nightstand. Then he goes back to soothing Matt, "It's okay. Just…find your breath…or whatever."

"Ugh…get 'em…" water dribbles down his chin, Matt having not bothered to swallow. He struggles against Foggy's grip. "Get 'im off me…"

Foggy glares at Stick, "You heard him. Get away from him." He can't deny his happiness when the old man acquiesces. Matt'll hold it together without chemical restraint – like he always does, Claire will show up with some extra supplies, and they'll be in the clear.

Except Matt continues muttering to "get 'im off" after Stick stops touching him.

His hand floats down to his hip. Foggy catches it. "Oh, crap." Matt's not asking to get Stick off; he's asking to get the maggots off.

"Matt," Foggy has to wrap his arms around Matt to keep him still, an action which, in turn, causes Matt to buck weakly in his grasp. "Matt, I need you to listen to me."

Not before Foggy listens to him, apparently. Matt stops bucking and tries to explain, "Foggy…Foggy, something's wrong. Something's wrong..."

"Matt-"

"Something's wrong, Foggy. Foggy, there's something…" the clarity returns to his voice just in time for his jaw to drop in horror. He shakes his hands under Foggy's grip. Restraining him is easy but uncomfortable; what Matt lacks in strength, he more than makes up for in sheer perseverance. His movements grow more frantic the more his senses wake up and gather information about what is strapped to his hip. "There's _somethings_ …oh, God…oh, God, get them out of me! They're inside me, Foggy. Get 'em…get 'em out…"

Foggy's whole body goes cold as his brain floods with awful questions and awfuller answers. The internet's warning blares in his head. "Get them off," he orders Stick, because otherwise Matt, who has broken free and been recaptured twice in the past two seconds, is about to do it for them. "Get that off of him. Matt, we're going to get it off you!"

He leaves out the part where they're going to dig around inside Matt's wounds afterwards, fishing out maggots that may or may not be laying eggs inside him.

Stick is infuriatingly calm, "He's delirious."

Matt vehemently disagrees. His face twists, his hands jerk about, his body jitters with an electric current. Foggy holds him with one arm and moves the other to the maggot sack. "They're burrowing into his skin," he hisses.

"Oh, my God, what are? What are they, Foggy? Foggy!"

It takes the both of them to hold Matt still: Foggy wraps around his torso, Stick all but sits on his legs, and all of a sudden, Matt isn't just terrified. He's in pain too. Foggy recognizes the transition. "Matt, you have to hold still. We'll fix it! We'll make it better!"

"Pipe down a minute. Let me listen," Stick urges. He's looming over the two of them with that badasser-than-thou look on his grizzled face. Like oh, I'm so special - I can hear whether or not maggots have burrowed into your skin, Matt. Foggy wants to poke him or something; would, too, if Matt wasn't crushing him against the wall. Which he is, painfully.

Stick nods slightly, "They're not burrowing into his skin."

"What are?" Matt demands. He flinches, driving Foggy further into the drywall. "What the hell did you do?"

"Your sidekick and I put maggots on your hip to help clear out the infection."

"It was Stick's idea!" Foggy declares, distancing himself as much as possible from the decision. "It was either that or surgery."

"Should have gone with surgery…agh!" Matt goes taut as a bowstring. He lunges for his hip.

"What's wrong? Matt? Talk to me!"

The old man has a sick gleam in his blind eyes, "Hurts, doesn't it, kid?"

"Super not helping, Stick!" Foggy curses.

Matt plays along as best he can, shaking as he resists the urge to kill Stick and the maggots in one fell swoop. "Stings a little."

There are tears collecting on his lower lashes, and a scream clutched in his throat that Foggy hears eking out in small bursts. Meditation, schmeditation: Matt can't meditate the pain of maggots consuming his infected flesh away. Why he keeps trying, or at the very least pretending it doesn't hurt, is stupid and so clearly a testament to Stick's training. "Get him some more water," Foggy orders. He pats Stick on the shoulder, "Go! Now!"

"I'll still be able to hear you."

"He'll still be able to hear us."

They say it at the same damn time, like they're the same damn person. Foggy almost drops Matt in protest. "So go somewhere you can't hear us," he insists.

Former-master and apprentice focus on one another for a long, fraught moment: Stick daring Matt to lose control in his presence, Matt daring Stick to stick around for that to happen. He's in the mood for ripping faces. Foggy is about to curse them both for being idiots, but miraculously, Stick leaves, and no sooner has he slammed the loft door behind him than Matt's self-control slackens. Foggy knows the old man must be out of range when Matt chokes and splutters on a silent sob. The sudden hunch of Matt's spine, the soundless cry he rips from his chest, breaks Foggy.

"I know, Matt, I know," Foggy hugs Matt. Christ, he's warm. He's so warm, and as if burning up isn't bad enough, he's also being eaten alive.

Painfully. Agonizingly.

"How long?" Matt's devil voice is ragged, desperate. His eyes flicker back in his skull tiredly. "How much longer?"

"Soon!" it's a lie, but Foggy's heart is doing too many things to tell. Matt, too, is distracted, what with the maggot-induced agony that steals his breath from his lungs. Foggy shakes him, refocusing his senses, "They're helping. I promise they're helping."

"God, it h-h-hurts," Matt weeps a little. He sucks a few meditative breaths, but his focus snaps. No amount of damage control breaks through to him. Foggy soothes with words, with touch, with outright hushing. Matt responds by growing more frantic. Foggy can feel the tension in his back, down his legs, through his face. Matt starts to push his head into Foggy's clavicle so hard the bone might break. He's left groaning, leg twitching, sack of maggots shaking.

"Focus on me," Foggy begs him. He pulls Matt off his shoulder until they're face to face. "Focusing helps, right? Focus on me. Focus on…the words that I'm saying and the sound of my heartbeat and the fact that I haven't showered in twenty-four hours."

"Ugh…don't mention smell…"

Foggy changes tactics, "We've got some meds, Matt. It'll take the edge off. Help you sleep. Sound good?"

Matt tosses his head in what looks like an emphatic 'no'. He purses his lips, puts on his best brave face, and he looks even sicker, even more in pain. "I can't, Foggy. I can't…I feel sick enough already…"

"You're fighting an infection, Matt. That's why you feel sick."

"Whatever you gave me didn't help," a ghost of a smile, that trademark, Murdock smirk, the one that Foggy is torn between mirroring and wiping off his dopey face, returns. "Kind of want to throw up on you."

"Please, wait until Stick comes back," Foggy begs him. "Also, no matter how bad you feel, it can't be worse than maggots."

Matt makes a face, remembering that he's in a lot of pain and showing it. "I can't, Foggy. I can't…"

"You can't what…? Be out of control? Let people take care of you?"

"Stick doesn't take care of people."

He has a point, Foggy is disappointed to say, "But I do! I've got you, Matt. Nothing's going to happen to you while I'm around. You're going to sleep, and when you wake up, you're going to feel so much better. Please, Matt? Please?"

Matt shakes his head, "It's not that, Fog. I don't want to be…helpless. Not with…not with him around."

Foggy hates this. He can't be sorrier for calling Stick, for needing the extra pair of hands. "Nobody wants him gone more than me, believe me, but I can't do this alone, Matt. Neither can you. And I can't watch you be in pain until Claire shows up."

"Claire?"

"Yeah, man. She's coming when her shift's done, but that's hours away," Foggy can't believe it. He's making headway. Matt Murdock is actually considering the meds. He's making his crumbly face, his desperate face. Foggy presses on, "You really want to lie here in agony until then?"

He brushes a hand through Matt's sweat-slick hair. The gesture causes Matt's breathing to hitch. He sags against Foggy despite himself. "Please, Matt?"

"I'll be blind, Foggy…"

It doesn't sound like a joke, so obviously Foggy has to turn it into one, "Matt, buddy, I hate to break it to you-"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do, but I won't be. I'm going to be right here the whole time. I'll be your eyes, ears, mouth, nose, fists, _everything_. And the second Claire shows up, I'll make sure Stick is good and gone. Promise."

The lad's expression crumbles. The weepy, broken sounds creep out of his mouth as tears drain down his cheeks. Precious water his body can't afford to lose. Foggy wipes them away since Matt can't lift his arms anymore, "Come on, Matt. I'll take care of it. You know I will."

"You shouldn't have to."

"Not gonna argue with you. I am going to get you a drink. Something with sugar in it. You need to use the washroom?" Matt shakes his head. "I'll be back. Here, easy, easy. Don't touch your hip while I'm gone," Foggy lowers him back onto the pillows. He rushes to the kitchen and back to find Matt with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, breathing raggedly the way Stick coached him to.

"Slow," Foggy has to tell him when the ginger ale is offered. "You can't throw up yet. Stick isn't back."

Matt stops, still wincing, "Thanks, Foggy."

He almost lets the topic slide. Almost, "Whattaya say about some meds?"

Nothing. Matt says nothing. He nods, tears staining the pillowcase around his head. Foggy helps him sit up, hands him the tablet, and for all the trouble it caused, the whole affair is over in a matter of seconds. Matt lies back down; he breathes deep. Foggy takes a seat on the bed next to him.

Then the room is quiet again.

"You slip him something?"

Foggy leaps off the bed. Stick, the asshole, is in the doorway, not having made a sound since returning to the apartment.

"Yeah," and Foggy lets the lie twist his voice into a snarl, "yeah, and when that didn't work, I yelled at him until he opened his mouth before I shoved the pill into his stomach."

Stick seems to keep his face permanently shrouded in shadow. "Good kid," he says, and, weirdly enough, he means it. He means it so much, in fact, that he doesn't say another word. He retreats to the living room and sits down on the couch out of Foggy's sight.

Foggy kind of wishes Matt was awake to translate. He gets the sense like he's done something right and can't say why.

* * *

Happy reading!


	8. Maybe Your Old Man Fought for You

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: It was report card week, so I was writing comments instead of chapters. But this weekend was very productive: this chapter, and my epilogue. _We Were Both Disappointed_ will be finished this week, and then it's back to _Just In Case_ and hopefully some projects for _Jessica Jones!_

Okay, so there's a conversation about love in this chapter. With Stick. I tried to keep it from entering OOC territory, but I did want to give Foggy the opportunity for a confrontation.

Readers, I so appreciate your kind support, your lovely comments. There's one last disgusting scene here – enjoy! The last chapter is all Matt's perspective, so the grotesqueries will all be experiential.

Thank you, Readers. Thank you! Enjoy.

* * *

Chapter Eight: Maybe Your Old Man Fought for You, Maybe He Did it for Himself

Foggy isn't about to up and leave Matt with Stick again, but pissing the bed is not an option. He maintains a normal pace to the washroom, pees faster than he ever has before in his life, and then waltzes back to Matt's side like nothing's the matter.

Stick is still on the couch. Sitting. Got his feelers out, as always, and Foggy can tell he's been spied on by the impossible way Stick tracks him through the room. The old man's head tilts imperceptibly in Foggy's wake, or maybe it's a trick of the lights at play through the windows.

He sinks back onto the bed next to Matt and checks the clock. Claire must be getting off work soon. Then Stick can be on his way. Foggy texts her that his special request won't be necessary; Matt's being a better patient than ever before.

No sooner is the message sent than guilt makes an appearance though, and in a big way. Not about the drugs: Foggy is the reason Stick's involved after all. The old man wouldn't be in the city if he hadn't made thousands of dollars in long distance calls. And while Foggy is convinced that Stick is the reason Matt is still alive, or at the very least that Matt got found, he can't shake Matt's fear. Being afraid of helplessness is one thing, but Matt specifically said he didn't want to be helpless around Stick.

Foggy glances up for a second. His heart skips a beat and gives him away. Yet there Stick sits, silent, inert, like he's not really there at all. He blend perfectly into Stick's peripheral vision. If the scariest monsters are the ones no one can see, than Stick is the most terrifying monster of all. He's got invisible strings wrapped round Matt's head, and he is exactly the type to give them a tug when things need doing.

Like what, Foggy doesn't want to know. Thirteen-year-old Matt, fresh from his father's murder, would do a lot for a guy like Stick's approval; thirty-year-old Matt might not be itching for approval, but he still falls in line when he's called. Hand on his chest, a few patient slogans, and then he's calmed down from a panic attack. Not exactly troubling, until Foggy thinks about it from Matt's perspective: the man who abused and abandoned him is the only one who can bring him comfort. That goes all the way up to eleven on Foggy's Awful Shit-o-meter. Can only imagine where it goes for Matt, who's expected to rest easy when the man who wound him up into a warrior is sitting pretty in the same apartment.

Anxiety gets the better of him. Foggy stands up and moves around the bed.

"Hard part's over," Stick tells him.

"I know."

"So what's the problem?"

"Nothing."

Stick laughs. He leans back on the couch, "It's something."

Human lie detectors. "What gave me away? My heartbeat? The fact that I hold my breath before I talk?"

"No, you try not to do that, which only makes it more obvious that you're doing it."

"Good for me."

"You want to say something. Say it."

Where has he heard those word before? Like murderous pseudo-father, like emotionally-damaged surrogate son. Foggy marches back to the bedroom doorway, "What happened between you and Matt?"

Stick shrugs, "Depends on who you ask."

"I'm asking you," Foggy declares. "He says you started his training, but you left before you could teach him about knives. That's not your usual MO."

"And what do you know about my MO?"

He hasn't moved, but Stick's gotten closer, or maybe he's gotten better prepared to pounce. All show, at this point, since Foggy is pretty confident Stick isn't going to kill him. Hurt him plenty, sure, but the old man isn't about to burn his bridge to Matt completely by offing his best friend.

Foggy doesn't want to play his hand; what he knows about Stick's reputation is irrelevant to their conversation. "I know that you don't ditch the kids you train before they can handle a knife," he leans against the doorway and gets a feel for the atmosphere in the living room. Stick continues to give off I'm-going-to-kill-you vibes, but that's Stick. "So what happened?"

Stick's mouth falls into a harder line, something Foggy didn't think was possible. His hand twitches above his folded cane. "A case of mistaken identity," Stick states, "on both our parts."

"Who did you think Matt was?" Foggy asks.

"Doesn't matter."

"Who did you think he was?"

Stick groans, "I said it was a case of mistaken identity: means he wasn't who I thought he was, so why does it matter?"

Foggy isn't about to drop the subject. He is in the conversation for the long haul, and waging a battle of words is a hell of a lot better than spending the next hour worrying himself sick over Matt, "Is it because he won't kill?"

"That's part of it," Stick says.

"You expected a kid to kill," it shouldn't surprise Foggy, but it does. Fucking Stick.

"The killing didn't come up until later," he sounds like a kid in trouble, like everything's bad when Foggy puts it _that_ way.

"So, what? He didn't want to fight your war? Didn't want to be a vigilante?"

The fight drains out of Stick. Foggy can't believe he's finally won.

Until he realizes that he hasn't. Stick doesn't need to throw a punch when his words are busting the air out of Foggy's chest. Which they do, impressively.

"Wanted it? No. He _needed_ it. You think I showed up, roughed him around a little-"

"A lot," Foggy corrects him.

Stick tosses his head, not disputing it, "-until he decided he wanted to bash some skulls in?"

"His dad told him not to fight."

"His dad's dead," Stick snaps, and Foggy gets the strange vision of Battlin' Jack dying anew with the way the old man's said it. There's a little less of Matt's father in the world now. Stick doesn't care one bit. The less of the dead, the better. "Fighting or not-fighting: neither was gonna bring Battlin' Jack back. But fighting is going to make life a little more liveable, a little more bearable, and Matt knew it. I showed him how to throw a punch and take a hit."

Foggy gets back on track, reminding himself what this conversation is really about. Yes, Jack's dead, but Matt's alive and unwell and Stick's partly to blame. Foggy wants to know how much, "By throwing punches at him and making him take hits."

Stick shakes his head, exasperated, "He was already taking hits. Blind orphan in Hell's Kitchen, senses out of control. He was going to end up in an institution, shackled to a bed, muttering about the voices or the noises or the smells. Not graduating Magna Cum Laude, having his own apartment-"

He wants to stay calm, needs to stay calm, can't stay calm because, "You didn't do any of this! Matt did all this on his own!"

At least Stick loses his cool too, "Because I taught him how!"

It makes it easier to get back on track, knowing the old man is all fired up. Foggy sees the mistake in front of him and avoids it the way a good lawyer should, "So why'd you leave? He would have been the perfect warrior."

"Perfect warriors don't have daddy issues."

"Uh, not true."

"You said perfect warrior, wise ass. We're not talking about some half-cocked, trigger-happy, adolescent grunt who's seen one too many action movies. We're talking warriors, and warriors don't have family, they don't have friends, and they definitely don't have daddy issues."

Alright, that Foggy can buy, but how that amounts to abandonment makes no sense to him. Until…oh, crap. There it is. Sitting right in front of him. Stick the Dick, failed father-figure of the frigging century, who sees his precious warrior engaging in hero-worship, freaks, and skips town. Foggy's heart shrivels up in his chest, "You left because he loved you?"

Stick makes a face, because it's not enough for him to be who he is. He actually has to demonstrate how little he believes in love, how little he thinks of love. "I needed him tough."

Foggy can't find the right words. He knows too many ways to call a person an asshole, and none of them cover the magnitude of Stick's assholery. And yet, something's not right. "You left because he loved you," Foggy says it again, "but that's not the whole story. Guy like you can make it so that somebody doesn't love you. I hated you before I met you."

"If you're about to say-"

Foggy cuts him off. He walks away from the doorframe, getting his lawyer on good. He is about to tear this asshole apart through cross-examination. "But there's not a person on the planet who doesn't love Matt Murdock. And, really, what's not to love? He's smart, he's kind, he's funny, he has less-than-zero self-esteem; he's obedient and eager to please self-righteous, murderous bastards who only want to see him hurt."

"I didn't love him."

"You traffic in orphans. Matt wouldn't have been the first who saw you like a father."

"No, but he was the first who wouldn't have given it up."

"He wouldn't, or you wouldn't?"

"He wouldn't. He still hasn't. You see the way he listens to me?"

"I see you: still here. Sitting vigil," and listening to Foggy ramble about stuff Stick insists is patently untrue. That's dedication. That's proof. With that, Foggy heads into his closing statement, "You didn't leave because Matt loved you. You didn't stay here out of necessity."

"Definitely didn't stay for this," Stick picks up his cane, his satchel. He stands, readying himself for travel. "He'd be dead tonight if it wasn't for me."

"I know," Foggy agrees. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Stick isn't just talking about saving Matt's life. He heads for the stairs.

Foggy doesn't stop him. Well, almost doesn't, "You're wrong about Matt by the way."

Stick hesitates more than stops. One foot stays one step ahead. "Never am, but go on."

"Love makes him better," is all Foggy says.

He anticipates a snarky variation of, "Love is stupid and useless and I'm a super tough badass murderer/child-abuser." What he gets a simple scoff followed by, "Better counts for shit." He mounts a few more steps before adding, "Your nurse friend is here."

Foggy checks the clock. Holy hell, Claire must have flown to the apartment, and gotten someone to cover for her because there's at least fifteen minutes left on her shift.

The door to the roof slams shut.

Stick's gone.

* * *

"I'm impressed," Claire notes, laying the covers back over the maggot-sack. "At least, I think I'm impressed. I've never used maggot-therapy before."

"Can you pretend to be an expert on it, then? Tell me I didn't screw it up royally?"

"Okay, you need to calm down."

Foggy only realizes then that he is having a hard time thinking straight, that he's breathing too quickly and too shallowly. Where the hell has this panic been? He accosts a killer for having a heart at great risk to life and limb, and he stays completely calm. Claire shows up with life-saving saline and all of a sudden, he can't get his shit together. All of a sudden, he's going to learn that he did something wrong, and that knowledge is obviously what will determine whether Matt lives or dies.

Claire snaps on a pair of gloves and pulls a sterile IV port out of her first aid kit. "He looks a hell of a lot better than you made it sound over the phone, which means you were either exaggeration, or the infection is clearing up. You did good, Foggy."

He takes a deep breath, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay," he agrees.

She goes through her motions: wraps a band around Matt's arm, finds a vein, sticks it. He twitches a little from the intrusion, but he stays asleep. Claire unravels some tubing and connects it to the sack of saline. "Thought you said his mentor was here."

"He left," Foggy said. "So many people to kill, so little time."

"I don't want to know," Claire crushes the bag in her hands to get it flowing faster before dangling it over the headboard. Matt's arm twitches again, probably from the chill, and he starts micro-fussing. Weak moans and mumbling, that sort of thing. Claire pats his shoulder, but it's when she lays her wrist on his forehead that he calms down. "His fever's not bad. When was his last dose on antibiotics?"

"About…six? Seven hours ago?"

She pulls a new syringe out of her kit and pops a needle on the end. She delivers the injection through the IV port. Foggy resets his mental timer for Matt's next dose. Claire makes a face, wipes her mouth and nose on the back of her forearm. "The maggots must be doing their job," she winces.

"Hanging out on an all-you-can-eat buffet of rancid flesh? Oh, yeah, they're having a great day," Foggy folds his arms, gives himself a hug. He doesn't want to think about it.

Claire doesn't either. She adopts the same posture as Foggy, "What did you give him?"

"Oxycontin."

"Wow. Aspirin's a stretch most days for him."

"Yeah, I know. Maggots hurt, apparently."

"It's good that he can sleep through it then," Claire admits. She loosens her posture a little, relieved, "You're going to have to get him to the washroom now, with the saline, unless you want to use the bed pads I brought from the hospital."

"Matt'll kill me if I let him piss the bed."

"He might kill you for trying to help him piss too."

"It's in the Bro Code somewhere. One of the appendices for special circumstances," though Foggy is starting to consider hauling Matt, the two-tonne ninja, to and from his bathroom. His back is doing the math for him, aching the whole time. "I'm hoping he remembers none of this."

"He'll know."

"He usually does," Foggy sighs.

Claire puts a smile on her face: a wry one, because she doesn't have to help Matt to the toilet but she has to talk about it. "What are friends for?"

Foggy almost tells her not that, but he doesn't. Everything that's happened tonight is an answer to that question.

* * *

The bathroom is the least of his concerns, as it turns out. Claire works magic, and she gets Matt semi-mobile before they have to heave him out of bed. He's not awake, but his feet carry some of his weight. That saves Foggy's back, though their list of Stuff We're Never Speaking Of Again gets a few notable points longer.

Removing the maggots. That's the most of his concerns. He doesn't think about it between finally sleeping and eating, having a companion who isn't a murderer. But then, all of a sudden, a full twenty-four hours after strapping them into place, Claire says it's time to take them off. The wound, she claims, should be better.

Foggy occupies himself with menial tasks. He lays out garbage bags over the mattress to catch all the creepers when they fall off his friend's hip. He gets the sterile solution to rinse the wound. He wanders through the apartment and stares hard out the window.

"You ready for this?" Claire asks, pinching the edges of the package. It doesn't move; why doesn't it move? Aren't the maggots full yet?

He shakes his head, "No, I am so not ready for this." Getting gloves on is a shaky process. He gets them on and it's a celebration, which Claire ruins by tearing off the dressings.

Cotton and maggots spill out over the garbage bags, while a smell that chokes the life from Foggy's lungs floods the room. He gags. He gags and nearly vomits over Matt _enthusiastically_. There's room in the Bro Code for puking on your bestie when the smell is as bad as maggots and day-old, fever-sweat, mostly-digested flesh-stink.

"I need you here. Now," Claire says. "I'll touch it, but I need you to wash it. Sterile solution. Please."

Foggy shakes his head, "I'm going to puke."

"Well, puke later. Help now."

She's right. Foggy pulls himself together, grabs the saline, and douses the wound until the whole room tastes like stink and saline. Better? Not much. Wetter. That's about it.

"Stop, stop, stop," Claire runs a gloved hand over the wound, checking the seams and pockets of each gash. She plucks the maggots out and drops them into the pile. After a good washing, the wound has lost the clear gloss of maggot secretions. The ribbons of Matt's exposed flesh is pink, healthy as wounds go. The black and purple is gone; the maggots are fat with it. They writhe, happy and fed, on the garbage bags.

* * *

Happy reading!


	9. The Guts to Let It In

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: As usual, my efforts to conclude a fic exploded well past my initial expectations. I'll save my lengthier notes for the epilogue, then, but I do want to thank the readers of this fic so, so much. It's been a real pleasure slogging through an infection and maggots with you. Please enjoy the last two installments!

* * *

Chapter Nine: The Guts to Let It In

The ins and outs of consciousness get harder and harder to navigate. Matt thought he was having a rough time when he first dropped into the sewer and ambled, face-first, against the concrete ground. But then he came to, freezing-cold and soaking-wet; reeking of puss and excrement, and he wanted to be having a nightmare. Foggy's whole being jangled with terrified energy; Stick magically appeared with his wretched tea. The drugging was a kindness, Matt's sorry to say, at least until awareness returns.

Unfortunately, the number of circles in his own personal hell keep expanding. The next time he's 'in' – awake is too strong a word to use for what he experiences – he's in agony. An orgy of needles and hot wires writhes on his infected hip, occupying his senses. Matt hears them slipping and sliding deeper into his skin. He would vomit from the smell of rank flesh if he had the strength to do so. Evidently, he doesn't even have the strength to sit up on his own. There's a heartbeat knocking against his spine, begging entrance. Matt can tell it's Foggy because of the whispers buzzing against his eardrums.

It's not okay, Matt tries to tell him, but he can't remember how to breathe with the brutal gesticulating of _whatever_ is on his hip. Briefly, he's struck with flashbacks to the crap that ate his vision out of his skull. The same chomping sensation digs into his hip. It's not Stick; the old man's shoving a glass of water to his mouth – water that tastes unadulterated but who the hell knows with Stick? It feels better draining down his chin and neck anyways. The chill distracts him from the teeming hoard trying to make a nest inside his abdomen, the same hoard that Foggy and Stick are content to let feed.

Oh, God: feed. He's being eaten. He's being eaten, his best friend is letting it happen, and Matt can't do a damn thing because he's so out of sorts. Limbs dead weight, clubs in place of hands, head a coal-burning furnace. He tenses, and his body heads into flight mode instead of fight mode, having misread the signs that he needs to get these things out of his skin. They're grinding down through his abdominal muscle into his bowel where they'll create a nice neighbourhood of blow flies before streaming out of him, a buzzing mass of white light in an immolated world. Matt hopes he's dead by the time it happens, though knowing his luck – and Stick's sadism – he'll live to see it.

Except that Stick leaves when Foggy orders him to, without a fight, which is weird even for this awful reality. The thought fizzles into steam, not standing a chance against Matt's fever. Besides, the pain is bad: really bad. Worse, somehow, than the deep-seated ache he's carried since Nobu and Fisk, because he can't get away. The spiking, stabbing, and sheering _in_ his skin, and his senses, so well trained by Stick, are harpooned and dragged back to his hip.

Foggy asks if he wants more meds. Matt's forgotten he's been doped. The nausea plays second fiddle to the wet squirming of maggots. No wonder he can't get his senses in order. Clarity, he wants to tell Foggy, the word dying in his throat before being consumed too. He wants his body back, his senses, because he's not going to let a buncha little insects win. Gotta grab himself by the throat and bend it to his will. That's what warriors do, and he's a warrior. He's a warrior.

All these years pushing Stick away, and the old bastard lives on in his subconscious waiting to pounce. Matt can't get him to shut up any more than he can make the maggots stop hurting. Hard to tell which one hurts more, in fact. "I can't, Foggy. I can't…"

Can't give up. Can't let the pain win. Can't admit defeat. Can't tell Foggy that the old sting of abandonment, of Stick's rejection, gets better and deeper when Stick's nearby. That the real reason he's afraid of meds is what Stick'll do with unfettered access to him.

He doesn't want to wake up different. Doesn't want to wake up tangled up in Stick's fucked-up fail-osophy.

Foggy interrupts his inner monologue, the one where Stick and the maggots come together in perfect, painful harmony: "I've got you, Matt." His grip on Matt's wrists and the steady pounding of his heartbeat break through Stick's stranglehold on Matt's senses. Foggy Nelson pile-drives the old bastard and cradles Matt's overheated brain with his words. "Nothing's going to happen to you while I'm around. You're going to sleep, and when you wake up, you're going to feel so much better. Please, Matt? Please?"

Plot blots out the next few moments, and time, for Matt, is disordered, dizzy, a mad spiral of his own breathing and the maggots squirming. His stomach climbs his esophagus and hangs on his tonsils, itching for release. To answer Foggy's question, the one he asked a lifetime ago, no, Matt doesn't want to feel this way. He doesn't want to be helpless around Stick either. Maybe he can hang on until Claire…

The maggots find a particularly juicy corner of his hip, and whatever he was about to wonder gets washed away by a nauseating wave of digestive juices. Matt hugs himself, finding more pain on his chest when he does, one more thing he wants to control but can't. Wants to breathe through but can't. Wants to wake up from but can't. All of the things Stick taught him how to do, he can't.

"You can: you choose not to," Stick might say…actually is saying in Matt's head. It finally occurs to Matt that him lying in pain is proof positive the old bastard doesn't have to be nearby to have a hold on him. So much of Stick's philosophy lingers, and Matt's internalized it to the point that he would rather be in agony than rely one of the best people he's ever known.

Foggy comes back after that; Stick doesn't. Foggy helps him up, and Stick slips away. Matt doesn't taste the ginger ale so much as feel his stomach slide back into place. He also doesn't taste anything else, anything that shouldn't be there. No tricks, no games, no training.

"Whattaya say about some meds?"

He could say no, and much as Foggy doesn't want to see him in pain, he'd let Matt lie there, hurting. And Stick would come back in the room, grab hold, and never let go, because he'd have Matt right where he wants him.

Foggy is here. Claire is coming. Stick is…he wants Stick to go away.

Matt nods. He smells tears, feels them on his cheeks; thinks it's a little messed up that Foggy is weeping overtop of him but no, wait, it's him. He's crying. He barely tastes the tablet with how much ginger ale he allows himself, and he doesn't notice when he's asleep again.

* * *

Too soon, much too soon to be awake. He's wearing sweat like a second layer of skin, thick and sticky and awful, and try as he might to do something about it, his body doesn't respond. Matt has fused with the mattress, become one with the sheets. It's all he can do to keep breathing.

The leaden air makes him gag. He can taste the ooze of digested tissue as he breathes through his mouth.

"Matt? Matt," Claire shakes him. She scrapes sweat off his shoulder, sending a chill flying across his chest. The cold collects on his hip. An itch continues to thrive there, one he tries to find but suspects he doesn't when Claire doesn't move to stop him. "Matt, I know you're tired, but I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me if there's any maggots left in your wound. Matt?"

The itching persists, followed by a soft stinging across the surface of the wound. "Stop," Claire says, but the stinging grows, the temperature dropping, and Matt struggles to hear past the crackle of what smells like saline in his tissue.

"He's out cold," Foggy notes.

"He's not. His pulse is picking up," she removes her fingers from his neck. Matt didn't even notice they were there. He musters a moan when she resumes shaking him, and the effort costs him a few seconds more of consciousness.

There's more moaning, some groaning, a final whine, because someone out there is in pain. A fire is building in the centre of the bed. Matt comes to with ash in his mouth. He feels his ribs pressing heavily against his lungs. His hand finally finds his hip. Actually, he finds Claire's gloved hand protecting it from being prodded. "Matt, I need you to tell me if there are maggots still in the wound," she commands.

"Itches…" he coughs. Beyond that, nothing. He can't focus with his thoughts flittering up, up, and away. One other thing is clear: "Hurts…"

"Can you feel anything moving?"

Matt groans as he forces his muscles to contract. His hip screams, tissue tugging. The gnashed nerve endings exploding with white-hot heat. He falls back into the pillows – or is pushed. There's hands on both of his shoulders, pinning him to the bed. Still, the stupid idea worked. Matt feels the chemical fog lifting. He gets a few seconds of focus.

It's enough to hear the twitch of muscle fibres, the sweet sting of saline; to smell the build-up of over a day's worth of sweat, blood, and mucous. Nothing moving but the cleaning solution that Foggy's applied liberally. Nothing feeding except the hungry jaws of sleep taking bites at his brain.

"No," he lets go. "No, no…they're gone. They're gone."

And so is he.

* * *

The next thing Matt knows is that he's moving. Up and over, around and around, through a thick haze of bio-horror that's taken up residence in the bed. Icy hardwood stabs against his feet as a small patch of skin on his forearm screams bloody murder. Matt tugs at it and tastes copper, along with a muffled chant of, "Hell no, hell no, hell no, Matthew." Fingers clamp protectively around his wrist, "That stays."

He grabs the wall for support, hand slick and slipping, a weak axis for his head to revolve around. And yet there he goes again, performing somersaults to nowhere from the waist up as his feet rollick against the shaking ground. "Another attack, Foggy?" he asks, remembering the way the city rumbled as hell poured out of the sky.

Foggy confirms the worst of his fears: "Yes, Matt, we are absolutely under attack: by bad decisions and compromised judgment."

The doorframe swings out of nowhere and catches Matt across the face. He swipes to try and put it back where it belongs only to find it hasn't moved. He has though. He's swung straight forward, and his knees are trying to follow without his feet.

His hip joins the conversation of aches and pains by building from a scratch to a roar inside him. Matt props his back against the wall and reaches, fingertips prickling against fresh bandages as pain nips at his nerve endings.

He buries himself in the small corner next to the doorframe. The smell has followed him. Every breath is liquid rot, and his stomach churns from the intrusion of necrotic…oh, God, maggots.

"I thought we agreed that I was going to take care of you," Foggy insists.

"I don't…I don't remember."

"What is going on, Matt? What's wrong?"

"Nothing…it's fine. Fine…" Matt wants to correct himself, but his jaw snaps shut when more of the rotting taste hits his tongue. He winces through the next few breaths, remembering that once the nausea wears off, the bleariness, the pain, he'll be fine. He'll be just fine.

"You are on too much medication right now to be fine."

He shakes his head no, but also says, "I know I am…"

"So…back to bed?"

"Smells, Foggy," he tilts his head towards the bed. Foggy nudges him in the opposite direction, a subtle indication of where the bed actually is. Matt corrects himself, "The bed smells."

Foggy pats him on the shoulder. The gesture sounds wet with acrid perspiration. "It's not the bed, buddy. You've been out for almost thirty-six hours, and you've been food for a bunch of hungry maggots. That's bound to make anyone a little ripe."

No wonder he feels smothered: his body is covered in a thick layer of body soil. "I need a shower." The bathroom is…his senses fizzle out of focus, beyond his grasp. The drugs have dampened his tactility to the point where he can't feel his wounds, though he tastes too much blood for him not to be bleeding.

The doorframe comes to his aid, cutting him off. His hip and chest wounds are a splay burn inside him, for one vibrant instant, before he's awash with drowse. He's crumbling into the floor, joining it, becoming one with the frozen hardwood. Foggy stops him before he can melt away.

"I can take a shower, Foggy," he notes.

"Yes, and when you can find the bathroom, stand by yourself, and not spontaneously leap out of bed for no reason, I will let you shower,"

"Foggy-"

"No, Matt!" Foggy's voice leaves a ringing in his ears, one that needles his heart. Matt has crossed a line at last with his friend's patience. All he can hear is an angry heartbeat and the desperate clamour of a pulse in Foggy's palms. "You almost died! Again! And I have worked my ass to make sure that doesn't happen! Again! So you are getting back in bed! And you are going to get better if it is the last thing that I do!" After a very pregnant, very silent pause, Foggy takes the liberty off adding one last, "Again!"

Matt apologizes. Again. He isn't sure how to feel about that. Mortality is a slippery subject, one that halts and breaks against sensations he has no desire to relive. And while he's on the subject of things he doesn't want to deal with, "Is Stick here?"

Foggy takes the bait for the moment. His heartbeat lets Matt know the subject of him almost-dying is not gone for good, kind of like Stick, "He took off a minute before Claire got to the door. I didn't have to tell him to or beat him up or anything."

The Stick in Matt's head seems to have gone silent too. Vanished into his long, painful night without a trace. "Good."

"He saved your life," Foggy adds quietly. His voice dances quietly over the edges of Matt's body, though that might be the aftershocks of his infection. Or the thought of owing Stick anything.

"The war is coming," Matt assures both he and Foggy. "He wants me ready."

"What war?"

"I don't know," and he doesn't want to. He can't find a middle way between the druggy fugue masking his senses and the pain that comes with full awareness.

Foggy's grip asserts itself through the torpor. He is the only certainty in Matt's little corner of oblivion. His heartbeat is unreadable, but the steadiness of his hands speaks louder than any of his words could. Stick-schmick: they have bigger, more pressing concerns. "Bed," he commands, drawing Matt up by the arms, "Now."

"Couch," Matt begs. He can't explain his aversion, but he evidently registers having spent thirty-six hours in bed at a cellular level. He lets himself be half-carried and all-led by Foggy in the direction of one of those two locations.

He's genuinely surprised when the couch bumps against his knees. He can't tell direction, can't measure depth or distance. The living room sounds and feels the same as the bedroom, though he knows the acoustics are totally different. God, he's a mess. "When will uh…when will the meds wear off?"  
"Little while yet," Foggy says. He's fiddling with something. Plastic slaps wetly against the back of the couch. Matt smells salt water. The sting in his arm makes sense: IV. Fluids and antibiotics coupled with oral painkillers. No wonder his GI tract is having a fit.

He sinks onto the couch, drifting into a haze, semi-conscious of movement around him. A blanket over his trembling shoulders. A glass of ginger ale landing on the table. Foggy slumping in the chair across from him. The gentle, steady thump of his own tired heartbeat.

Sigh. "Lay down, Matt." He's doing so too slowly and incorrectly, and Foggy manhandles him. "Not that way, not that way." Out of respect for his spinning thoughts, Matt lets himself be manhandled. It's Foggy, after all. He's safe. He's okay. He's breathing.

He's asleep.

* * *

Happy reading!


	10. We Were Both Disappointed

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: Matt's MIA, so Foggy calls in reinforcements. Unfortunately, the only person good enough to find Matt is the man who trained him.

Author's Notes: Okay, so I needed to include a last little bit of Stick being a dick (or is he?), not to mention a short conversation between Matt and Foggy. Once again, I hope this isn't OOC on any part. Stick isn't the only one with complicated feelings, after all.

Readers, lovely readers, I cannot thank you enough for joining me and supporting this fic with your kind attention. Please have a wonderful night!

* * *

Chapter Ten: We Were Both Disappointed

Matt dreams of being washed away. Of fingers scrubbing through his hair and the fluffy side of a towel moving over his face, neck, and chest. He dreams of sweet-smelling silk waves running over him, and then of a city street clawing into his spine as a bright blue sky is chewed to black.

The blackness greets him when he opens his eyes, but for once, it's comforting. It's peppered with all kinds of stimuli that register clearly in his head. Nighttime traffic prattles outside the window, and the sound reveals the dimensions of his living room. The smell of rot clings weakly to his skin, having mostly been scrubbed away during his nap.

Concentrating on his body results in a catalogue of aches, pains, and stings. His chest wound still smarts even if his hip had settled into a dull throb. When he draws a hand over it, the dressings don't move and an IV pulls on his forearm.

Hands wring nervously from the other side of the room. Foggy is in the armchair across from him, and the fact that Matt knows this is a small victory.

It's short-lived. He focuses and picks up on other details: staggered breathing. Ponderous silence. Foggy is doing some serious thinking.

Matt doesn't have the strength for a conversation, but he really doesn't have the strength for _this_. "What is it, Foggy?"

"We'll talk about it later," Foggy states.

"I don't want to wait," he brushes a hand across his hip, making him squirm. The maggots are gone, he has to remember that. "I'm sorry, Foggy. I'm sorry I almost died."

"It's not that." Correction: "It's not _just_ that. It's-"

A cell phone vibrates on the table before he can finish. Foggy grabs it, answers with a confused, "Hello?" Must be an unknown number.

Matt can hear who it is from the shift in Foggy's posture, the way his pulse rings like a Bernard Hermann score, the drop of his voice into a steady flat line, "Yes, he's awake. Do you want to talk to him?" a brief pause. "No, I wasn't going to let you even if you wanted." He goes stock-still in his seat. "I don't think he's hungry."

"I'm not," Matt confirms. He's actually the opposite of hungry. His stomach churns, but the rest of his digestive tract has halted completely. He thinks he can feels a cramp coming on, the thought of which makes him shuffle, which pulls on his hip wound, which reminds him of maggots…

No, definitely not hungry.

The quiet tingles and then flares with disappointment. Foggy's not afraid; he's impatient, angry, all the more so because he actually gets out of his seat and walks into the kitchen. "If this is one of your sick games-" he's cut off by one of Stick's remarks, one he responds to by saying, "Well, I know you are, but what am I?"

The freezer opens. "I see it," Foggy says. "I think soup's a better idea…" then he bristles audibly, "You would say that about any of my ideas."

Foggy nabs something, humming and hawing everything else Stick says until it's time to hang up. He tosses his phone on the counter along with whatever he grabbed from the freezer. "Stick says hi," he tells Matt. "He also says I'm supposed to give you this."

"What is it?"

"I'm pretty sure it's psychological warfare."

Matt braces himself, "It usually is."

Foggy takes that for what it is: an invitation to get on with it. He returns to the chair across from Matt and sets a container on the coffee table between them.

Goosebumps run up and down Matt's exposed bicep from the chill emitted by whatever Foggy grabbed from the freezer. He twists his head, trying to make out the shape using his and Foggy's breathing to echolocate. It's a pint-sized cardboard container.

Foggy clarifies, "It's ice cream."

Matt turns his head back until only his profile is exposed to Foggy. He pulls the sheet up around his shoulders, "Yeah, I'm not hungry."

"Do you want me to burn it?"

He wants to burn Stick is what he wants to do. The old bastard so loves rubbing salt into old wounds and maggots into new ones. "You can throw it out, Foggy," he says as the old ache grows achier inside his chest. "Milk from dairies in three different dairies and…a batch – a batch of chemicals straight off the periodic table and dirt off the hands of whoever packed it."

"You got all that from the package?"

"I got all that from Stick."

Foggy picks up the carton, inspecting it, "Doesn't look like there's chemicals in this. Or dirt. Apparently, it's all natural, organic."

Matt sets his jaw, "That's worse."

"Okay, I am probably going to regret this, but how?"

"When I first met Stick, he took me for ice cream. Told me all the reasons I shouldn't like ice cream, all the things I never wanted to taste in ice cream."

Foggy gets lost in thought, having trouble, no doubt, negotiating Stick's character based on what has to be severely limited information. Matt saves him the trouble, "Stick's an asshole, Foggy."

But that's not the whole of it. There's a lot Foggy isn't saying, so much that Matt was unconscious for and complicates the hell out of the ice cream. So much that Matt doesn't ever want to know. Thank God Foggy picks up on that. "Okay," he rises from his seat and carries the carton away to the kitchen. The sound of the trashcan opening strikes an unhappy chord in Matt's chest despite himself.

Stick's an asshole. He is absolutely an asshole.

"Wait," Matt says. He eases up the pillow until he's on a forty-five degree angle. His stomach protests with a growl; Matt ignores it. "Can you…would you get me a spoon?"

"I thought you weren't hungry," Foggy states. The garbage can stays open expectantly.

"I'm not," he swallows the lump in his throat, the one made of dread, guilt, and loathing, all the crap Stick left behind. "But I should probably eat something."

"You have other food."

"I know."

Foggy's heart rages loudly inside his chest. "He is an asshole."

"I know that too."

The trashcan closes though. The silverware drawer opens and slams shut. Matt winces from the sounds. He isn't going to get food down his throat with all the awful feelings balling up by his tonsils.

He lets Foggy share the couch by adjusting his legs, absorbing the pain in his hip and chest because he's an idiot. He's an idiot who can't give up on the idea of Stick, the larger-than-life blind warrior who saved him from himself, even when the old bastard does nothing but prove Matt's perception to be patently false.

Or does everything to prove that it might be true.

Foggy hands him a loaded spoon and, by the sounds of things, dives in with one of his own. "This is delicious," he comments after his first bite.

Every inch of Matt pouts, starting with his stomach, which stops churning sullenly. "Yeah," he agrees, "it is."

Foggy huffs, "He is _such_ an asshole."

Matt sighs, tucking himself more deeply under the blankets. "Yeah, he is."

* * *

Happy reading!


End file.
